Singham returns to box office with roaring success

First-day collections of the Ajay Devgn-starrer touch Rs 32 cr

Ajay Devgn-starrer Singham Returns, which raked in Rs 32 crore on its opening day on August 15, upstaged Salman Khan’s Kick, which was the highest opening day grosser for 2014 at Rs 26 crore.

Rohit Shetty, who directed and co-produced the movie, now has two films with more than Rs 30 crore opening day collection — the second one being last year’s Eid release Chennai Express. Singham Returns joins Salman Khan’s 2012 Independence Day release Ek Tha Tiger, Hrithik Roshan’s Krissh 3 and Aamir Khan’s Dhoom 3 to be in the top five opening day collections by a Bollywood movie.

(Read the review: Singham Returns)

The film is a sequel to the 2011 film Singham, which starred Ajay Devgn in the titular role, and did very well at the box office raking in Rs 100 crore. Devgn returns as police officer Bajirao Singham in the sequel with Kareena Kapoor playing the female lead and a supporting cast that includes Amol Gupte, Anupam Kher, Dayanand Shetty and Mahesh Manjrekar.

Many factors worked in favour of Singham Returns, say analysts. While the franchise is popular with the masses, thanks to the success of Singham, releasing the movie on a public holiday (Independence Day) has also helped improve footfall. The movie was released in nearly 3,500 screens across India, 500 shy of the 4,000 screens that Kick was released in.

However, Singham Returns, with an average occupancy of 80 per cent on the opening day pan-India, has trumped Kick’s opening day collection. “While Kick missed out on a huge movie going to audience in UP, as it was released on the last Friday of the holy month of Ramzan. In the case of Singham Returns, there was no such barrier and single screens and multiplexes across the country showed healthy occupancy,” say trade pundits.

The movie is expected to continue doing well, as many schools, colleges and offices are closed on Monday on account of Dahi Handi. Singham Returns is a popular movie among the kids as well, which is further expected to drive collections. It should be able to cross the Rs 100-crore mark by Monday night, feel distributors.

Often referred to as the Rs 100-crore director, this could be Shetty’s fifth movie to cross the box office milestone. The other movies include Chennai Express, Singham, Bol Bachchan and Golmaal 3. Shah Rukh Khan and Deepika Padukone starrer Chennai Express, in fact, kicked off the festive season at the box office last year breaking records and chugging to the Rs 200-crore mark as well.

In the case of Singham Returns, the analysts are not sure if it will cross the 200-crore mark. After the long weekend, the movie will need to sustain collections through the week before it can take advantage of the weekend once again. The current trend in Bollywood is that the first weekend (in this case it is almost four- day long) is the most voluminous in terms of collections and the following weekdays can see a drop of as much as 70 per cent in terms of box office collections. Kick defied this trend earlier last month with steady collections throughout the first week. However, the second week saw a significant dip in revenue.

Singham Returns has been made with a budget of Rs 110-115 crore (including production, prints and advertising). The broadcast rights of the movie have been sold to STAR India under a deal between Devgn and the channel network. The deal, valued at approximately Rs 400 crore, is similar to the network’s agreement with Salman Khan, and gives it the telecast rights to all of Devgn’s movies released between 2013 and 2017. Devgn is also a co-producer on the film along with Reliance Entertainment.