BO Report: The Kerala Story Reaches 225 Cr, Fast X to Enter 100 Cr Club, IB 71 Aims For 25 Cr Lifetime

With new releases not really setting the box office on fire, it's the holdover releases that have been making the most of the screen space available to them. The films which benefitted the most from this are The Kerala Story and Fast X which brought in close to 25 crores between them, something that kept the box office business going. The next best was IB 71 while amongst new releases, it's Jogira Sarara Ra Ra which has earned some moolah.

Let's talk about The Kerala Story first. The film is continuing to stay strong at the box office and is easily the biggest contributor to the month of May. In its fourth weekend, the film fetched around 11 crores more and that too when the film is still not being screened in West Bengal where there is ready audience for Hindi films. It was really remarkable to see the manner in which the film jumped from 2.50 crores on Friday to 4.25 crores on Saturday and then there was further sustenance on Saturday.

All of this has pushed the numbers to 225 crores, which is a huge milestone for the film and now it has to be seen that how much closer to the 250 crores mark will it eventually get. That milestone won't be possible though since a lot of audience has already been exhausted for the film. Still, 240 crores is certainly on and that would be more than even pre-pandemic score of some of the biggest big budget blockbusters that Bollywood has seen.

Meanwhile, Fast X is moving towards the 100 crores mark. The weekend gone by resulted in 13 crores* more been added which has pushed the film's overall collections to 94 crores*. By the close of the second week, the action entertainer would have hit a century, which is indeed huge since that has kept the franchise not just alive but even kicking solidly. Rest assured, the next part of Fast X will open even bigger and the 100 crores mark would be reached within the first week itself.

One movie which is holding well is IB 71. The film had collected 11 crores in its first week and then seen a reasonable drop in the second week by bringing in 5.50 crores. Now the third week will see less than 50% drop since the weekend has stayed decent again at over 2 crores. What was impressive was the way in which Saturday collections (80 lakhs) were pretty much double of Friday (40 lakhs) and then Sunday (90 lakhs) held on well too.

The Vidyut Jammwal starrer has collected 18.55 crores* so far and the 20 crores mark would be reached on Friday for sure, if not Thursday itself. Since the word of mouth for the film is good, this Vidyut Jammwal and Abbas Sayyed production is continuing to get decent showcasing at theatres. The fact that there wasn't any major release this Friday helped the cause as well, though IPL matches on Friday and Sunday (albeit washed out) robbed the film as well to an extent.

As for the new releases, there were more than half a dozen of those - Jogira Sara Ra Ra, Aazam - Rise of a new Don, La Vaste, NRI Wives, Auhaan, Chal Zindagi and dubbed Malayalam release 2018. The one that bought in some moolah was the Nawazuddin Siddiqui and Neha Sharma starrer Jogira Sara Ra Ra. The film did have a slow start at 40 lakhs but then almost doubled up to bring 70 lakhs on the day after and then stayed around the same levels on Sunday. As a result, the weekend numbers came to 1.75 crores*. Since the film's budget is just 9 crores and there are other digital and satellite rights waiting to be explored, it would be interesting to see how does the ROI eventually work out for the film.