At the box office, the first week of the New Year has come to a close, and the movies largely followed expectations. Films have been experiencing higher than usual decreases in sales following the lengthy and profitable holiday season. The only movie that hasn’t experienced a significant decline is Riteish Deshmukh’s Marathi romantic-thriller Ved, which was released over the New Year weekend and didn’t particularly profit from the holiday season. This weekend’s already-running movies won’t have any new local competition, so we can anticipate that they will hold up somewhat better than they would have had another big movie come out.
Ved, starring Riteish Deshmukh and Genelia Deshmukh, is earning record sums for a Marathi movie. It is unprecedented for a film to gross more than Rs. 20 cr in its opening week. Six days in a row, the movie has brought in more money than its opening day, and it is highly likely that this trend will continue during its second weekend. The first week figure is an all time record for a Marathi film and with a trend like this, a number in excess of Rs. 50 cr nett is well in sight. It is a very promising comeback for the duo after Mr Mummy, that emerged as a huge disaster theatrically. The Marathi movie audience has always been very loyal to Riteish.
Within a week, there could be four major releases in India. After Drishyam 2, a film from India will finally gross over Rs. 15 crore. This Sankranthi/Pongal season, four films—Varisu, Thunivu, Veera Simha Reddy, and Waltair Veerayya—are coming out; each is predicted to have an opening weekend in India of over Rs. 15 crore net. Normally, almost two months would pass at the box office without a significant release from India, but this time it did.
