After staying dried up for months due to coronavirus-led lockdown, box office is slowly seeing cash registers ringing thanks to Hollywood and some regional content from down south.
While Hollywood's big venture Wonder Woman 1984 (WW84) is taking away all the limelight, a recently released Telugu film, Solo Brathuke So Better is doing wonders down south especially in markets like Andhra Pradesh and Telangana.
The film in these two markets alone has collected around Rs 8 crore in two days of its release in cinemas. Considered as the first big Telugu film to release in theatres after the lockdown, Solo Brathuke So Better released in cinemas on December 25 and earned around Rs 4 crore on its opening day.
The romantic-comedy drama maintained its growth momentum in terms of box office collections on its second day and took its two day total to around Rs 8 crore in two markets alone.
The film saw shows running houseful in theatres which currently means only 50 percent capacity.
The other film that is entertaining audiences during Christmas holiday is Gal Gadot's Wonder Woman 1984 which so far has collected more than Rs four crore since its release on December 23.
However, the Hollywood venture saw limited opening on December 23. Hence, the movie saw major business from December 24 onwards. On its first day the film collected around Rs two crore and continued to garner similar business on its second day, taking the two day total to Rs 4.50 crore.
WW84 is performing better than Tenet and film trade analysts expect the movie to reach Tenet's lifetime collection of around Rs 11 crore by the second weekend.
While WW84 is minting strong numbers at the Indian box office, the business is still lower than what was expected due to night curfew in Maharashtra.
Maharashtra is a big market for Hollywood films as it contributes around 35 percent of the box office collections. Plus, night and evening shows contribute 30 to 40 percent of any film's business.
This is why Wonder Woman 1984 is expected to see around a 20 percent drop in its expected revenues.
And this will spell bad news for the release calendar for 2021. Bollywood producers so far have not taken the risk of releasing big ventures like Akshay Kumar's Sooryavanshi and Ranveer Singh's 83 and analysts think such uncertainties will further make them doubtful regarding the release of the two films.
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