Bollywood Box Office: September 1-3, 2017

Labor Day weekend featured an unexpectedly close North American box office battle between two newly released Hindi films. The action flick Baadshaho narrowly won its race against the romantic comedy Shubh Mangal Saavdhan, despite opening in 1.5 times the number of theaters. From September 1-3, 2017, Baadshaho earned $268,286 from 119 theaters ($2,255 average), according to Bollywood Hungama. 143 Cinema reports earnings for Shubh Mangal Saavdhan of $259,999 from 80 theaters ($3,250 average) — less than $10,000 behind Baadshaho.

Bollywood Hungama reports individual country data for the United States and Canada instead of the more common practice of combining them into one North American territory, revealing the fact that Shubh Mangal Saavdhan actually beat Baadshaho by $35,000 in the US! Although Hungama’s report unfortunately doesn’t include Canadian figures for Shubh Mangal Saavdhan, the difference between Hungama’s total and 143 Cinema’s total puts Canada’s contribution at about $40,000 — though I’d love to know from how many theaters to see how it compared to Baadshaho‘s Canadian per-theater average of $4,513.

Given A Gentleman‘s slow opening weekend in North America, the action comedy held up surprisingly well in its second weekend of release. Box Office Mojo reports a 45% weekend-to-weekend holdover, which is seventh best for the year. A Gentleman added $86,556 from 130 theaters ($666 average) to bring its total to $361,631.

It was a good weekend for slightly older releases as well. Toilet: Ek Prem Katha closed out its fourth weekend with $77,714 from 48 theaters ($1,619 average), bringing its total to $1,792,987. Bareilly Ki Barfi was close behind with third-weekend earnings of $70,183 from 25 theaters ($2,807 average). Its total stands at $462,952. Mubarakan hung around one last theater for a sixth weekend, earning $21 to bring its total to $736,310.

Sources: 143 Cinema, Box Office Mojo, and Rentrak, via Bollywood Hungama

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