With only one Hindi movie showing in the United States and Canada, there isn’t much to report in the way of box office figures for the weekend of March 27-29, 2015. In its third weekend, NH10 earned another $26,798 from 23 theaters ($1,165 average). That brings its North American total to $300,793.

The significance of that figure is that NH10 is only the third movie in 2015 to earn more than $300,000 in North America, out of ten Hindi films that have released here theatrically (*I don’t have figures for MSG: The Messenger of God, but I guarantee it earned less than $300,000). Furthermore, NH10 made its money on half the number of max screens (46) as the next highest earner — Badlapur, with $419,836 total and a max screen count of 92 — and less than half the max screens of the year’s highest earner, Baby ($730,288 total, max screens 99).

It’s also worth noting how dull business has been in the first three months of 2015 compared to the first three months of 2014. January-March, 2014, saw the release of sixteen Hindi movies into North American theaters, seven of which earned more than $300,000 (with three of those earning more than $1 million).

The sixteen films released in the first quarter of 2014 earned a total of $10,307,214. That’s an average of $644,201 per film. Even without the huge earnings of the non-traditionally distributed movie The Lunchbox, that’s still $6,319,821 from fifteen traditionally released Bollywood films. By comparison, total earnings from the first quarter of this year stand at $2,359,916. That works out to an average of $262,213 per film.

Granted, 2014 didn’t have a Cricket World Cup to contend with. Still, it’s obvious from the numbers that the films that have shipped out of Bollywood recently aren’t movies that the North American fanbase feels an urgent need to see. Given the titles that are slated for release, I don’t see the trend changing any time soon.

Source: Rentrak, via Bollywood Hungama