Box Office: Great Weekend For Theaters As The Kerala Story & Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 3 Bring In 60 Crores

Box Office Update: Close to 100 days after the release of Pathaan, finally the majority of theatres that screen Bollywood and Hollywood movies saw some good all-around buzz. The weekend gone by saw the release of The Kerala Story and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, and both films have ended up bringing in audiences.

In fact till just a few days before the release of the two films it had seemed that the Hollywood superhero affair would act as a filler and engage some footfalls, whereas there were hardly any hopes for the Bollywood release. However, all of that changed.

What transpired was totally unthinkable as Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 did indeed have reasonable business at the box office but then the unusual suspect came in the form of The Kerala Story which was ahead of its Hollywood counterpart by around 10 crores.

That's absolutely unthinkable since the budget of the Marvel biggie is at least 50 times more of the Vipul Shah production but at least in India, audience attention has been more towards the latter.

THE KERALA STORY FIRST WEEKEND BOX OFFICE COLLECTION

Let's talk about The Kerala Story first. The film has totally surprised the industry with its opening, with 35 crores* coming over the weekend. This is unbelievable as even the biggest of the films have been struggling to register this kind of numbers in their opening weekend post-pandemic and here comes a film with no saleable name, an unknown director, a controversial subject, just about okay production values, almost negligible promotion and marketing, and absolutely no support from the film industry as a whole.

Still, a couple of days prior to the release, it had started seeming that the film may surprise, though again that quantified into 2-3 crores opening day. Even that would have been seen as good due to the aforementioned factors but what transpired was out of the world as the opening day numbers read 8.03 crores.

Never before has a small film gathered this kind of moolah on its very first day and in that sense history was created on Friday itself. However, this wasn't all as collections on Saturday and Sunday increased further with double digits coming in.

As is expected for a film belonging to this genre (conversion and terrorism), the reactions have been polarized at least from a critical standpoint. However, amongst the audiences, it is largely positive and hence it's expected that the hold during the weekdays would be good as well.

Monday collections are touted to be at least 5 crores and if that indeed turns out to be the case then the Adah Sharma starrer would score a half-century within the first week itself and then go on to have an extended run for many more weeks to come.

HERE'S HOW MUCH GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY VOL. 3 COLLECTED

Meanwhile, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 has seen a decent weekend as well with 25 crores* coming in. Though this one is a Marvel outing, the characters as a whole are not that popular at least in India. They do work as a part of Avengers but standalone, Guardians of the Galaxy has never worked as a franchise.

While Vol. 1 went completely unnoticed, Vol. 2 had a lifetime of mere 13.80 crores. Hence, for Vol. 3 to have a weekend of 25 crores* is good enough and eventually it will go on to have a lifetime of over 40 crores which would be triple of Vol. 2.

The film started at 7 crores* but then unlike The Kerala Story, it couldn't grow enough over the weekend. That further goes on to show that the market for this franchise is still building and so far it's just the hardcore Marvel fans who are patronizing the film. Even otherwise, the film didn't really make much of a buzz in India prior to release and hence whatever has eventually come in is decent enough.

Also, perhaps the film could have grown a little better but then The Kerala Story proved to be a surprising competition and that curtailed its further prospects.
Overall though, between the two films, around 60 crores came in over the weekend and that has infused some sort of life into the exhibitors and distributors who are otherwise waiting for the big bucks to flow once Adipurush releases on 16th June.

*Estimates. Final numbers awaited

Note: All collections as per production and distribution sources