MUMBAI: The first Friday jinx seems to continue as three out of four new releases of the first Friday of 2013 had to be discontinued unceremoniously from many cinema halls.
Table No 21, thanks to Paresh Rawal in top billing, is the only one to survive as well as have some collection figures to show for itself. The film has managed to collect Rs 58 million during its first weekend. The collections in North have been badly affected due to severe cold conditions.
The three films withdrawn by the exhibitors are Rajdhani Express, Meri Shadi Karao and Dehraadun Diary for want of audience response.
Arbaaz Khan‘s sequel to Dabangg starring brother Salman Khan in the lead role of Chulbul Pandey, Dabangg 2 has just about exhausted its potential at the end of the second week as the collections showed a peak of Rs 80 million on Sunday and went down to Rs 20 million on Thursday, collecting Rs 315 million in all and taking its two-week total to Rs 1.31 billion.
Akshay Kumar and Asin‘s Khiladi 786 collected Rs 10.5 million in its fourth week. The movie‘s box-office net now stands at Rs 658 million.
Aamir Khan, Rani Mukerjee and Kareena Kapoor Khan starrer Talaash added Rs 7.5 million in its fifth week to take its total collections to Rs 945.6 million.
Four releases are lined up for Friday, 11 January. The exhibitors, especially multiplexes, expect Matru Ki Bijlee Ka Mandola to bring the audiences back to cinemas after a couple of dull weeks. The release problems for Vishwaroopam with multiplexes still continue as of today because the producers have planned to release the film on the DTH platform first with which the multiplex owners are not in agreement. The other two releases are Gangoobai and Four Two Ka One.
