Abhishek Bachchan has had a humiliating streak post-Raavan with this Bachchan’s starrers like Game and Khele Hum Jee Jaan Se failing to take even a respectable initial in India. Infact his solo starrer Game was just recently beaten at the box office by a ‘Faltu’ movie literally.
So it is not surprising then that his new release Dum Maro Dum, despite collections boosted in Nizam due to Telugu star Rana Dagubatti, hasn’t quite evoked a benchmark response in India, taking once again an underwhelming opening on Friday of less than 5 crores net and then checking out for a weekend haul of 15-16 crores net, 20 crores gross weekend.
The saving grace for it is DMD has beaten the Punjabi movie Dharti of Jimmy Shergill and another regional Telugu film Mr. Perfect; however its occupancies and collections are nothing to boast about when capacities for major Hindi films are hovering around Rs 80 crores gross weekend and Rs 175-180 crore week mark at full capacities in 2011 figures.
Bollywood simply has been losing ground with lack of much star appeal and last decade’s holdovers like Abhishek Bachchan simply unable to pull in the crowds at the box office. As such middle aged actors who would be near retirement or transitioning away are still showing up in big banner films as leads. Some examples being Salman Khan whose Ready is pitched for release, Shahrukh Khan, and Akshay Kumar whose Thank You and Patiala House have flopped one after another after Tees Maar Khan as well.
The average ticket price at upscale theaters is hovering around Rs. 300. However last week the highest grossing movie at many such places was an English film Rio 3D.
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