<i>Krrish</i> likely to be nations top most grosser

Friday, July 14, 2006
New Delhi (UNI): In the battle of the superheroes at the box office, the Indian superhero has won hands down over his Hollywood counterpart! Hrithik Roshan's superhero act in Krrish has proved to be a bigger draw than the Hollywood film Superman Returns. As far as box office collections go, the 'desi superhero' flick has far outdone the West's 'superman film. This despite the fact that Krrish was in the second week of its run while Superman Returns was in the opening week of its screening. So, while, according to trade sources, Krrish grossed around Rs 11 crore in its second week with a per screen average of nearly Rs 5 lakh, Superman Returns grossed nearly Rs 2.5 crore. What was more significant, however, was the fact that Superman Returns had a per-screen average much lower than Krrish at Rs 4.25 lakh.

While the difference in the performance between the two films was not much in Mumbai where Krrish earned over Rs 2 crore while Superman returns grossed Rs 1 crore from about half the number of prints as Krrish, in the Delhi-UP area, Krrish far outperformed the Hollywood film with its collections being a little less than Rs 2-0 crore as against just around Rs 40 lakh earned by Superman Returns. What was further surprising was the fact that even in areas of South India and Assam, where Hollywood films are generally preferred over Hindi films by the audiences, 'Krrish's performance was far better than Superman Returns. For example, while Krrish earned over Rs 15 lakh from Bangalore in its second week, the opening week's collections of Superman Returns were a little over Rs 10 lakh.

In Assam, another area where business of Hindi films is generally not very good, trade sources said earnings of Krrish were expected to at least cross the Rs 25 lakh mark, making it the top grossing Hindi film in the North eastern state in the last five years. Trade sources said collections of the Hindi dubbed version of Superman Returns, which was released along with the original English version, were also quite dull. According to the sources, the Hindi version of the Hollywood film could earn just Rs 20 lakh from Mumbai, while its collections in the Delhi-UP areas were Rs 13 lakh.

Perhaps the awareness that Krrish could pose a challenge to Superman led the Warner Bros, which is distributing the film in India, to release the film on 300 prints in India, rather than 600 as decided earlier. Meanwhile, the Hrithik Roshan Priyanka Chopra-starrer continues to create new box office records in its second week. The film, which created box office history with mind-boggling collections of Rs 69 crore in its first week itself, making it the fastest money spinner in the history of Bollywood, is still drawing audiences in huge numbers to cinema halls. The huge collections in the opening week, coupled with the fact that the film continues to run to packed houses makes it a certainty that 'Krrish' will eventually turn out to be the biggest box office grosser in Bollywood in recent times.

Trade sources said the overall box office collections of the film are expected to cross the Rs 100 crore mark which makes it the highest grossing Bollywood film ever, the earlier one being Anil Sharma's Gadar-Ek Prem Katha, which grossed over Rs 90 crore as box office collections. The film also continues to go strong in the overseas markets. In the United Kingdom where Krrish had collections of 210, 499 UK pounds (approximately Rs 1.5 crore) in its opening weekend from 46 cinema screens and figured at number nine in the UK top 15, the film has by and large maintained its position. So while, in the second week, it was at number 12 in the UK top 15, the third weekend again saw it jumping two places to be at the number ten position. The film had collections of 60, 344 UK pounds in its third weekend from 33 cinema screens with a per-screen average of 1,829 UK pounds. In fact, the film's total collections in the first two weeks were 551, 916 UK pounds (Rs 4.69 crore). In the Unites States, the film collected 34, 859 Dollars in its first two weeks.

Recent Stories
Darna Zaroori Hai
Darwaza Bandh Rakho