Cirkus Unfortunately Doesn’t Take Off At Box Office, Avatar: The Way Of Water Is A Blockbuster

It was one contrasting weekend for Bollywood and Hollywood as quite a few hopes were shattered. The last big weekend of 2022 was meant to be special, what with Cirkus seeing a big release on Christmas Day weekend. More than anything else, the release date was just perfect as post the Christmas holiday (which fell on Sunday), there was an open week ahead with mini-holidays round the corner as many are on vacation. Then the second weekend was perfectly placed as it led to the New Year. Hence, if a film were to be picked by the audiences then sky was the limit for it to perform, as has been the case with several biggies in the past, be it Tiger Zinda Hai, PK, Dangal, Simmba, Good Newwz and more.

Unfortunately though, it didn't quite work out for Cirkus that way as audiences didn't even give it a chance on its opening day. Now that was all the more surprising since a film can be a hit or a flop basis audience word of mouth but ignorance is an absolute killer. Not that the Ranveer Singh starrer came unannounced. There was good promotion and marketing campaign around the film and with 3-4 weeks of intense buzz around it, one expected that it would translate into footfalls.

Sadly, this was not the case as the first day numbers were just a little over the 6 crores mark, something that was not expected even by the worst of the detractors. At the bare minimum, at least a double digit score was on the cards but when even that didn't happen, one wondered if things would improve over the weekend. This too didn't happen and as a result the Rohit Shetty directed film closed the weekend at 21 crores*. This is unfortunate because even though Rohit Shetty has made made better films in the past, this is certainly not the kind of movie which deserved such negativity around it.

The film which is finding all the positivity around it though is Avatar: The Way of Water. After a blockbuster first week which saw 190 crosses coming in, the film had a second weekend seeing a fall of just over 50% when compared to the first weekend of 129 crores. As a result, close to 57 crores* more came in, which is simply superb. This is mind-blowing indeed since collections like these are hard to come by for so many films even in the first weekend and here comes a Hollywood movie which gathers as much even in the second weekend and that too when there is a new release Cirkus to content with as well.

The James Cameron directed sci-fi action drama has now collected 247 crores* already and that's a huge number after 10 days. That's an average of around 25 crores per day and this is simply amazing as it goes on to show yet again that audiences want to catch a film on the big screen and it's all about which is that film and what's the popular sentiment around it. Avatar: The Way of Water has emerged as a blockbuster and from here on an entry into the 300 Crore Club is imminent which will make it an all time blockbuster.

*Estimates. Final numbers awaited