Till last year’s Syara, for almost a decade, leading Bollywood production house, YRF, had found success only with its spy verse films or those starring Rani Mukherjee. This week will see another film starring Rani Mukherjee, the third film of the Mardaani franchise, Mardaani 3, which is doing well at the Indian box office.
Pragati opened quite late, just yesterday, and their start has been slow but encouraging. At the time of writing, the film has sold around 9K tickets across national chains, PVRINOX and Cinepolis. By the end of the day, this figure should reach 15K, possibly 20K. Most of the advances and then collections will come from the national chains, which is absolutely fine, because the film does not need to do well everywhere.
One thing that has been going wrong with films recently is that the costs have increased a lot. The price of a film which used to be X a few years ago has increased to 2X, some even 3X. Mardaani 3 has done well in this regard as the film has been made on a controlled budget. Although it costs twice as much as Mardaani 2, it is still quite manageable if the film gets the right response, as the non-theatrical collections are also quite good.
The other thing that’s hurting movies in this region, and the industry in general, is the ridiculously short streaming window, which is currently only eight weeks. This has been discussed at length in the past, but nothing seems to be changing, so for now it’s something we’ll have to live with, unless, of course, things change. This will be a big plus for cinema.
The first two films of Mardaani performed well at the box office and both were successful. Going by the developments, it looks like Mardaani will open in the same range around Rs 3. 3-3.50 crores. This number increased to Rs. 4 crores or more if the reception is more visible from morning till evening. From that start, with good growth over the weekend, the film can take off. All this is entirely anticipated by the pace of progress. The important part is that the reception goes well tomorrow.
