Box office collections: 1920: Horrors of the Heart surprises with Day 1 earnings of Rs 2.34 crore

1920: Horrors of the Heart was relying on the 1920-franchise powder to do the trick, and that’s exactly what has happened at the box-office. (Screen grab)

There have been surprises galore from Bollywood this summer. Just when it had started to look like it would be a largely dull season, we saw successive hits in The Kerala Story and Zara Hatke Zara Bachke. Now, 1920: Horrors of the Heart has surprised analysts. There weren't a lot of expectations from this film, considering it was coming unannounced. There was no marketing, no promotion, and the release too was sparse. It was entirely relying on the 1920 franchise powder to do the trick and that’s exactly what happened at the box-office.

The film has taken an opening of Rs 2.34 crore (Hindi - Rs 1.48 crore;
Telugu and Tamil - Rs 86 lakh) at the box office and that’s far bigger than the best of the estimates that anyone could have come up with. When it seemed that Rs 50 lakh would be the best-case score for the film on the first day, it has actually done more than twice that.

In fact, looking at the way this Krishna Bhatt-directed horror film is doing, it’s already seeing a rise in screens and shows which will keep theatres busy till SatyaPrem Ki Katha arrives on Thursday, June 29.

Meanwhile, Adipurush has seen a major drop in earnings on the weekdays after an excellent opening weekend of Rs 113.50 crore. It only made a little over 20 crores in the four days after the first weekend, which resulted in the first week numbers of Rs 135 crore. This first week score is still one of the best in last 20 months, post-pandemic. However, since there have been countless issues, controversies, negative campaigns, audience outrage and more for almost 10 days now, the film is not getting good enough moolah anymore. Some of the dialogues in the film have been changed now and it remains to be seen if that results in increase in collections.

Meanwhile the film which has emerged as a huge surprise is Zara Hatke Zara Bachke which is now assured of a lifetime of over Rs 80 crore. A mid-budget film which was pegged for a lifetime of around Rs 20 crore pre-release, it’s going to do more than four times the expected business. While the film did good business in the first two weeks of release, it managed a good hold in the third week as well with almost Rs 10 crore coming in. Now the fourth week has started quite positively as well with Rs 1.35 crore coming (which is bigger than previous Friday of Rs 1.08 crore) - the films earnings currently stand at Rs 73.89 crore. The film should now cross the Rs 80 crore mark by close of fourth week itself. Superhit.

*Estimates. Final numbers awaited.

Note: All collections as per production and distribution sources.