Last year’s Diwali release Thugs of Hindostan was a disaster at the box office.
However, ironically, it not only registered a record for the biggest opening day ever for a Bollywood film (Rs 52.2 crore), it has also retained it since.
The fact that it crashed soon after, to close around the Rs 150-crore milestone, is a testimony to the fact that audiences are ruthless when they are offered a bad product.
Circa 2019, and things seem to be placed much better for this Gandhi Jayanti release War. The film releases on October 2 (Wednesday) and has been carrying great hype with very good buzz.
Rest assured, the film is set to open extraordinarily and a total of Rs 40 crore on the opening day is pretty much a given. With an assured release over of 4,000 screens, advance booking commencing already, aggressive marketing and promotion, and most definitely the presence of two much loved stars Hrithik Roshan and Tiger Shroff, War is clearly a major event film that is hitting the screens this season.
That said, to make a record-breaking start is a different ballgame altogether. For that, there is a much bigger leap that Roshan and Shroff would have to take. Let us talk about Hrithik first. His biggest opener so far is Bang Bang (Rs 27.5 crore) and incidentally, that film too was directed by Sidharth Anand and released on Gandhi Jayanti.
On the other hand, Tiger Shroff’s personal best is Baaghi 2 which made a stunning opening of Rs 25.1 crore in 2018. Now if War has to beat Thugs of Hindostan’s opening day record of Rs 52.2 crore, it would require the combined might of Hrithik and Tiger to come into play. This means, the sum total of their personal best -- Rs 52.6 crore -- would be required to be scored. That too would be just about enough to edge past the Aamir Khan-starrer.
This is what brings things into perspective because while records are always welcome, one needs to assess the ground reality much closely and then build expectations from there. Of course, since first day collections of over Rs 40 crore are there for the taking -- which means Hrithik and Tiger would have their personal best being scored for sure -- for the film to stretch past Rs 50 crore, it would need a real special entertainment quotient by Sidharth Anand.
At their end, Yash Raj Films have done their best to give War an event release. Now it would be interesting to see how big the audience makes this action thriller which is already making all the right noises.
(Joginder Tuteja is a trade expert and film critic. Views are personal)
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