First month of 2nd quarter started on a positive note which saw a spillover effect of Baaghi 2 that earned Rs 27.60 crore on 3rd day of its release.
The Indian Premier League (IPL) may be losing its steam if the latest data on television viewership of IPL is taken into consideration. This in turn may help theatres in getting more footfalls. And when the summer line up is strong, it could help cash registers jingle at the box office.
Amit Sharma, MD, Miraj Cinemas, said, “Ten years back when IPL started Bollywood took a backseat. They were not releasing big-ticket films during IPL. But if you look at last year, Baahubali 2, Tubelight, Hindi Medium, Fast & Furious were released. The year before that saw big-ticket films like The Jungle Book, Fan and Piku doing excellent business including Jurassic World.”
As per the BARC India viewership data, Hindi speaking markets have seen a drop in IPL viewership. The first month of the second quarter of 2018 started on a positive note.
There was a spillover effect of Baaghi 2, which collected Rs 27.6 crore on third day of its release. The film had hit the theatres on March 30. Then came Varun Dhawan-starrer October which grossed Rs 45.58 crore in nine days of its release.
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Sharma expects theatre admissions to rise 5-10 percent and box office collections to increase 15-20 percent during summer.
While Bollywood has a lot of films in store for moviegoers this summer, which is now being considered as an exciting period for film releases due to the May Day weekend and also the long summer vacations for students, Hollywood too is geared up to showcase its best works.
“This year too there are big-ticket items. Avengers has taken a hurricane opening in the world. India’s collection on day one will be two times in comparison to any other Hollywood release in India,” Sharma stated.
Apart from Avengers: Infinity War, which released in India on April 27, Hollywood offerings include Deadpool 2 releasing on May 18 and Solo: A Star Wars Story, which will hit the theatres on May 25. 3D animation feature Incredibles 2, adventure fiction Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom and another Marvel superhero offering Ant-Man and the Wasp are slated for a summer release on June 15, June 22 and July 6, respectively.
What makes these films so important for the Indian box office can be gauged from the collections of preceding films of the same franchise. While Deadpool earned Rs 29 crore in 2016, 2015 saw the release of Jurassic World which opened to the third highest numbers in India and gathered Rs 23 crore in four days.
Apart from Bollywood which has films like Raazi, Race 3, Sanjay Dutt’s biopic and Veeri di Wedding slated for release this summer, Sharma also lists out southern releases like Mahesh Babu’s Bharat Ane Nenu which has minted Rs 125 crore globally. "In addition, there are two to three big-ticket Telugu films too releasing this summer."