Many releases in 2017 but Akshay Kumar's 'Toilet: Ek Prem Katha' flushes out others to be on top

If we look at the movie releases in 2017 so far, it seems the film industry saw a slump this year. While movies with superstars such as Shah Rukh Khan and Salman Khan failed to draw audience to the theatres, Akshay Kumar’s Toilet: Ek Prem Katha (TEPK) became the highest grossing Hindi movie this year in terms of net collections.

Released on August 11, TEPK was reminiscent of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s 'Swachh Bharat Abhiyaan' and the film has earned a total of Rs 131.88 crore so far. On the day of its release, its collections went up to Rs 11.34 crore from 2,950 screens – this is a huge number as movies generally don’t earn over Rs 10 crore on their first day.

The movie, in its sixth week of release, is still continuing its run in theatres. It may get a few screen in its seventh week as well and is expected to gross about Rs 132 crores.

In its first week, TEPK garnered Rs 94 crore net and the film benefitted from the public holiday on Independence Day. The film’s best business came from Delhi and Uttar Pradesh.

The Hindi film industry has seen a poor year so far with no film grossing Rs 150 crore net. There have been only five over Rs 100-crore films. Tubelight and Raaes didn't keep up with the expectations. The industry was not short of major releases instead it was loaded with them yet the business has not been as expected.

Toilet is not only the highest grossing film of the year but it also the highest grosser of Akshay Kumar. The film was competing with Kumar's 2012 release Rowdy Rathore that had collected Rs 131.21 crore. His other films like Airlift and Rustom, too, fall in the top grosser category but these movies fell short of few crores to beat Toilet. While the August 2016 release Rustom managed to earn Rs 124.45 crore, Airlift raked in Rs 123.46 crore.