Dilwale
Dilwale

Dilwale has enjoyed a good opening weekend at the box office. With good numbers coming on each of the three days, the film has now brought in 64 crore* over the weekend, which is a healthy enough start.

Of course, by Shah Rukh Khan standards, these numbers may seem low since Happy New Year [104 crore] and Chennai Express [100.41 crore – including paid previews] were runaway successes in their opening weekends itself. However, if one looks at the first three days collections of (Tuesday release) Jab Tak Hai Jaan (49.22 crore) which clashed with Son of Sardaar, the numbers are much better.

While weekdays are now expected to hold well for the Shah Rukh Khan-Rohit Shetty film, all eyes are now on the second weekend which has the big Christmas holiday coming up. That would give a good push to the overall collections of the film. While the film should enter the 100 crore club in the first week itself, it would be interesting to see how far it goes from this point on.

Meanwhile, the film has now scored the third highest opening weekend of the year after Bajrangi Bhaijaan [102.6 crore] and (Thursday release) Prem Ratan Dhan Payo [101.47 crore – first three days]

That said, one just feels that clashes between two biggies should most certainly be avoided as it not just divides the business in a big way but also ends up bringing in a lot of uncertainty around the eventual verdict that a film would enjoy. Since, for the last half a decade, Bollywood has gotten used to the opening weekend and the first week pretty much deciding the overall fortune of a film, a situation like this where a three-week run will decide the eventual box office standing almost seems unprecedented in today’s times.

*Final numbers awaited

Note: All collections as per production and distributor sources