Will the GHAJINI momentum to carry on?

By Joginder Tuteja, If first weekend collections were anything to go by, 65 crores was an eventual possibility at the end of the first week run for GHAJINI.

Even conservatively speaking, 60 crores was the minimum that the industry was looking at. Well, the first week's collections are out and the opening has pretty much broken the ceiling all over. The figure reads an astonishing 64 crores, something that seems invincible for many more weeks to come. A total like this is the kind that many a superhit movies would love to have at the end of a lifetime run but 64 crores in just a week (which was for 8 days and some preview shows by the way) is monumental by any standards.

Just look at the collections from some of the major centers - Mumbai (11 crores), Delhi (5.75 crores), Delhi NCR (4.25 crores), Ahmedabad (~2 crores), Pune (3.25 crores), Nagpur (~1 crore), Jaipur (1.5 crores), Bangalore (3.5 crores), Hyderabad (2 crores). Simply fantastic

With such huge number to boast in the first 8 days of the release itself, from %age drop point of view the week 2 may not see a conventional 50% fall (as is for most of the biggies). We could be looking at a 65% odd fall but that is pretty much acceptable and understandable considering the fact that large number of prints were floated around in the market and those belonging to FDFS (first day first show) variety have already seen the film. Some may say that with a relative fall in collections, the GHAJINI momentum is not carrying on strong. Well, it would be stupid to even consider the trending factor for a movie as big as GHAJINI since with 64 crores already in the kitty and ~ 25 crores more expected in the second week, the Aamir Khan starrer is all set to be country's first 100 crore earner.

JUMBO has failed miserably though! The general buzz amongst the audience was near to nil and the resultant box office response for this animation film has proven to be a damp squib. Makers of JUMBO wouldn't have thought that in the much anticipated festive season (with voiceovers by Akshay Kumar, Lara Dutta, Dimple Kapadia, Gulshan Grover and Rajpal Yadav to boast), the GHAJINI mania would be so strong that it would sweep away everything and anything that came it's way. However, even though they came up with noble intentions and promoted JUMBO to an optimal level, audience were not interested in watching anything but GHAJINI and to an extent RAB NE BANA DI JODI. Result? JUMBO could gather a mere 2 crores at the end of the first week and is staring at a complete dip in collections from here on.

--SAMPURN