When they both released on Friday, August 31, everyone including the trade hedged their money on Yamla Pagla Deewana: Phir Se beating Stree at the box office. The two films were given equal screen times. After all, the former is the third instalment of a franchise that has performed well before. “But there was no advance booking for Yamla,” says Shailesh Kapoor of Ormax Media, a firm specialising in trade insights. “Given the potential of the film, the timings should have been 70:30 in favour of Yamla.” When Monday arrived, it was clear that Stree would go on retain almost 90% of the shows.
So far, the horror comedy has performed extraordinarily well, snagging a whopping ₹93.66 crore net. Yamla Pagla Deewana: Phir Se, on the other hand, ended its first week with a disappointing ₹9.25 crore net. While Stree enjoyed a clear first week with only the Deols for company, its second was also free of competition. All three subsequent releases, Gali Guleiyan, Paltan and Laila Majnu, performed poorly.
Small budget, big impact
Made on a tiny budget of ₹20 crore, Stree was released to 1,800 screens across the country. Its unexpected success follows in the footsteps of films like Sonu Ke Titu Ki Sweety that, on a budget of ₹30 crore, made ₹100.80 crore net; Raazi which was made on ₹38 crore but earned ₹122.39 crore net; and Veere Di Wedding that collected ₹80.27 crore net from a budget of ₹42 crore. It’s testament that theatre-goers are watching more than the larger-than-life blockbuster spectacle on the big screen. As reported by The Hindu earlier, it’s also very likely that this year will break the curse of the diminishing box office returns.
Of all the films that have performed well in 2018, big budgeted and otherwise, Stree’s revenue also stands out because of its genre: horror comedy. While the style has been rampant and profitable in the South, Bollywood has seen very few instances. The most recent being Golmaal Again (2017) that made ₹205.50 crore net on ₹142 core budget. “Horror comedies are an unexplored genre and with the success of Stree, we could expect more people to make such films,” says Kapoor. “But Golmaal [Again] also did well because it’s part of a franchise and released around Diwali.”
With this week’s Love Sonia and Manmarziyaan, Stree might still some shows in the next few days. If the film continues to pool in more than a crore a day, it’s quite likely to cross ₹100 crore net soon.