After a fabulous showing over the weekend of December 18-19 when over Rs200 crore came in at the box office - thanks mainly to Spider-Man: No Way Home and Pushpa: The Rise - it was another good weekend at the box office, with close to Rs100 crore being generated.
Christmas is usually a big weekend for cinema halls. However, the fact that Christmas came on a Saturday this time may have shaved off some of the gains for films - compared with years when a big festival falls on a weekday.
The big movies running in theatres this weekend were new release '83, and last week’s releases Spider-Man: No Way Home and Pushpa: The Rise which has (surprisingly) been doing great business in Hindi.
First, the new release: It was expected that '83 would see a big opening and then become even bigger with every passing day. Ideally, the film should have made somewhere in the range of Rs65-70 crore over the first weekend. Day 1 box office collections for '83 stood at Rs12.64 crore. Collections stayed good, though not excellent, over Saturday-Sunday. And as a result its first weekend came to a close at Rs49 crore. From here on, the film will need to be very consistent - while entry into the 100 crore club should not be a problem, there are expectations of a far bigger score from the Kabir Khan-directed picture.
As for Spider-Man: No Way Home, it has already exceeded expectations. In its second weekend in India, box office collections stood at around Rs29 crore. Tom Holland has gained acceptance globally, and in India, as the newest Spiderman, as can well be gauged from this film's performance so far. In fact, it is entirely possible that the overall box office collection for this film in India alone could surpass the Rs175 crore mark - entry into the 200 crore club cannot be ruled out either.
Meanwhile, Allu Arjun starrer Pushpa continued to bring in the audience in the second weekend as well. The Hindi version of the film alone has enjoyed a weekend of close to Rs10 crore - and that's really good for a dubbed film. As a result, the film has now netted around Rs37 crore and should eventually score a half-century around the New Year.
Between '83, Spider-Man: No Way Home and Pushpa (Hindi), close to Rs100 crore was generated. Add to this the collections that have come in from the Telugu version of Pushpa, and it has been a century again at the box office for the films that are running.
One just hopes that the trend continues for weeks to come. With Shahid Kapoor’s Jersey delayed indefinitely, the industry can use all the good news it can get.
Note: All collections as per production and distribution sources
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