Karan Johar’s latest directorial, Rocky Aur Rani Ki Prem Kahani, hit screens on Friday, seven years after the successful run of his last, Ae Dil Hai Mushkil (domestic gross: Rs 160.69 crore; Rs 237.56 crore worldwide).
The multi-starrer released across 3,500 screens domestically and is expected to notch Rs 12 crore on Day 1, going by advance booking trends.
According to movie analyst and critic Taran Adarsh, by Thursday night 10.30 pm, a total of 74,075 tickets of the movie had been sold across national chains (PVR: 40,375; INOX: 22,450; Cinepolis: 11,250). According to industry tracker Sacnilk, the movie registered 12% occupancy in the Hindi market for morning shows.
The lifetime box office revenues of the film is expected to be in the range of Rs 120 crore, estimates Elara Capital, provided the buzz sustains after a healthy opening.
RRKPK opened a week into two big-ticket Hollywood releases — Oppenheimer and Barbie — that logged a strong first weekend, giving a much-needed boost to theatre occupancy levels in July.
Karan Taurani, senior VP at Elara Capital, says the performance of Hindi films continues to be below par with “no film reporting a positive surprise in box office collection since May”.
“The box office collection for a movie of this (RRKPK’s) scale remains at least 30% below pre-Covid benchmarks,” he adds.
In terms of recent performances, Hindi content remains a laggard since The Kerala Story released 12 weeks ago. Hollywood came to the rescue this month with three releases — Mission Impossible, Barbie and Oppenheimer — that are expected to report lifetime box office of Rs 90 crore, Rs 30 crore and Rs 100 crore, respectively, helping occupancy levels to move up around 26%.
Analysts expect the box office momentum to carry over to August with two big releases lined up — Rajinikanth’s Jailer on August 10 followed by Gadar 2. September could be the strongest, thanks to the release of SRK-starrer Jawan and theatre occupancy will likely breach 30% levels, indicating a quarterly occupancy of 25-26% for Q2FY24.
“Hindi content would need to make a strong comeback and large films need to emerge successful on a consistent basis if annual occupancy levels in FY24 were to move up to 27-28%,” says Elara in a recent report.
According to experts, the Hindi film industry also must focus on improving the quality of VFX and coming up with franchise-led films, a la Hollywood studios, if footfalls are to get back to 90% of pre-Covid levels.
Within the regional genre, concerns persist as films are not doing well on a consistent basis, which is keeping occupancy levels lower than pre-Covid levels.