Bollywood wrap: New releases, stars meet PM Modi and the KWK controversy

Uri Image- Twitter.com @vickykaushal09

Bollywood had a cheerful week with two new releases at the theatres and both doing reasonably well at the box office.

Aditya Dhar’s Friday-release Uri, based on the terrorist attacks at the Army base camp in Uri, Jammu and Kashmir, opened with Rs 8.2 crore at the box office and showed good growth over the weekend.

According to BoxOfficeIndia, the film showed strong growth of around 40 percent on January 12 with collections reaching around Rs 11.75-12 crore. This is a good number for day two and for a film that is not a mainstream commercial and that does not have a flamboyant star cast either.

Film trade analyst Taran Adarsh said via a social media post, "Uri is one film that should be watched. Absorbing screenplay, superbly executed combat scenes, efficient direction (Aditya Dhar). Uri is thrilling, gripping, instils patriotism, without getting jingoistic."

The week's other release was Vijay Gutte’s The Accidental Prime Minister. The film is based on a memoir by Sanjaya Baru, then media advisor to former prime minister Manmohan Singh. The movie opened with a collection of Rs 3.5 crore.

The film had a limited growth on January 12 with an approximate jump of 15 percent. According to BoxOfficeIndia’s analysis, this was expected as the first day collections were pretty high for this type of a film, which meant it was the controversy that had aided the film. It collected Rs 4 crore on January 12 to take its total collection to Rs 7.50 crore.

As for the old releases, Simmba is still going strong at the box office despite new releases and has made close to Rs 225 crore so far.

Simmba also crossed Rs 80 crore worth box office collections from international markets in two weeks. The film has fared exceptionally well in US-Canada, UAE-GCC and Australia.

Talking of international markets, Padman that released in Japan has collected Rs 4.32 crore despite not being a traditional market for Hindi films.

In other news, the internet was flooded with images of Prime Minister Narendra Modi with top Bollywood stars from a meeting organised by Karan Johar and Mahaveer Jain with the prime minister to discuss the film industry’s contribution in national building.

The delegates from the film industry included Ranveer Singh, Ranbir Kapoor, Ayushmann Khurrana, Alia Bhatt, Ekta Kapoor, Rohit Shetty, Bhumi Pednekar, Ashwini Iyer, Sidharth Malhotra, Ekta Kapoor, Rajkummar Rao, Vicky Kaushal and Varun Dhawan, among others.

Johar was also in the news this week for other reasons. His controversial interview with cricketers Hardik Pandya and KL Rahul on his popular chat show Koffee With Karan was not only taken off air but the duo was also sent back from the ongoing tour in Australia. Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) is also setting up an inquiry committee whether the two should be allowed for the upcoming New Zealand tour.