11 September was the day when Pakistani Film Industry saw yet another clash as the eagerly awaited ‘Manto’ and Resham’s controversial comeback film ‘Swaarangi’ hit cinemas all over Pakistan.While Manto boasted of a stellar star cast backed by GEO’s crazy promotions Swaarangi marked the comeback of Lollywod diva along with low key promotions. It was evident from the first day itself that Manto would be leading the race given the cinema showtimes but sadly Swaarangi has emerged as a complete washout as it has been dropped from almost all the cinemas and is left with only 6-7 shows across the country.
We talked to Khurram Gultasab, General Manager of Super Cinemas to get his feedback and he commented
‘Manto had an average occupancy of 86% at Multiplexes and had a 30% occupancy at single screen circuit cinemas where such films usually do not work at all. As for Swaarangi well it had an almost 0% occupancy at our multiplexes and single screens.’
We also talked to Mohsin Yaseen, General Manger Marketing and Operations at Cinepax and he said
‘Manto has done well at the boxoffice. Its an excellent movie with powerful acting, strong story line and direction. Swaarangi on the other hand was not as a huge a film as Manto and hence did not do as well. The business is just average.’
Here are the official numbers for ‘Manto’ as reported by GEO Films ( courtesy Box Office Detail)
Manto
Friday: 21 lacs
Saturday: 25 lacs
Sunday: 32 lacs
Total: 78 lacs
And given that the number of shows for the film have been increased at many cinemas due to public demand, the box office numbers are bound to show growth.
As for Swaarangi ,any official numbers have not released but we talked to Zain of Box Office Detail and he gave us a rough figure of 10 lacs as the opening weekend, which is indeed very low.
Let’s see what the coming days hold for both the films.
10 lkh figure is not a bad number at all for a movie which got 13 shows on its first day. Bear in mind that Swaarangi was a no-budget indie production made by a couple of friends — also a reason why the film was very shoddy technically. Footprint backed it on distribution, and trust me, it will recover its extremely low budget theatrically and satellite/DVD revenues which is an achievement. Not really worth caring about, but you got to get your analysis right.
We talked to the producer and whereas he might have made money selling the distribution rights, the same however cannot be said for the distributors!