The first month of the year 2019, i.e., January has proved out to be a dry month for the Pakistani box-office. With Simmba being the lone warrior, other films have come and gone without establishing a hold at the box-office.
Here is a summary of how films performed in terms of business this past week.
Manikarnika
The Kangana Ranaut starrer biographical period drama film released last week and opened with good numbers at the local box-office, i.e., 1.25 crores. The film continued a decent run the entire week and raked in around 1.90 crores.
The numbers are reasonable considering the movie was a non-holiday release in Pakistan unlike its release in India. Moreover, women-centric films have not done too well in our country, and hence it is crucial for the film to continue like this to be a success story.
Cheat
The Emraan Hashmi starrer, as predicted, could not impress the audiences much and has wrapped up its first two weeks around 1.5 crores.
This film has continued the rough patch of Emraan Hashmi on both sides of the border as it could not impress much the Indian audience too.
Fraud Saiyyan
The comic crapper starring Arshad Warsi and Saurabh Shukla, despite being panned by all the movie critics and Indian audiences, has managed a collection of 1.25 crores in Pakistan.
These are decent numbers considering the bad word of mouth around the film. It also shows that there is a massive scope for good comedies at our box-office.
K.G.F.
This Kannada blockbuster has managed some good numbers despite releasing three weeks late and being a dubbed film.
Its collection of 1.55 crores are reflective of the fact that a good masala film will find some acceptance among its desired audience no matter what. Riding on this success of the first part, the second part of K.G.F, when it comes out, might find direct success at the local box-office.
How to Train Your Dragon 3
The final installment of the successful franchise, How to Train Your Dragon, maintained its stable trend at the local box-office. The film has grossed a total of around 70 lacs in its first 12 days, showing a very minimal drop from the first week. This is an excellent performance considering the shows it had got and also the fact that it was a release before its global release in Pakistan.
The film, however, is a perfect example of ‘release date gone wrong’ as its distributors made no significant effort to promote the movie.
3 Bahadur: Rise of the Warriors
The local animated release and once again, the last installment of the successful 3 Bahadur franchise, has almost completed its seven weeks at the box-office. The film has started to slow down now as there has been an influx of releases every week.
In this seven-week run, 3 Bahadur has collected a total of around 6.17 crores which is a great number considering the kind of competition it had to face from animated films like Spiderman and How to Train Your Dragon and even feature films like Bumblebee and Simmba.
The fact that it still managed to hold its fort amid all of this is a significant achievement. The film might be able to beat or at least match the collections of the first installment, i.e., 6.65 crores.
Simmba
Starring Ranveer Singh, Simmba has turned out to be a money spinner at the local box-office. With the total collections of around 19.15 crore in its 31 days and the good chances of crossing the prestigious 20 crore mark by its sixth weekend, Simmba will become a definite winner in this race.
These collections show the kind of love this film has got, stamping Ranveer Singh as the star of Pakistan Box-office with two mega-hits in 12 months (Padmavat being the other). The film will have a good run until the next Ranveer Singh starrer comes out, i.e., Gully Boy on the 14th of February.
Releases This Week: This week, we only have two of Indian Punjab’s releases on the local box-office. The first one, Uda Ada is about a family from a village that wants their child to study at a city convent school and what transpires after that. The second film is Sallu Ki Shaadi, but the film has seen such a limited release that it is pointless to even talk about it.
Indian Punjabi films have mostly failed to leave any mark at the local box-office, and these two seem no different either. For this week, we predict the fight at the domestic box office will remain between Kangana’s Manikarnika and Ranveer’s Simmba.
