The North American box office was in a holding pattern during the weekend of April 12-14, 2019, in anticipation of the April 17 release of the guaranteed blockbuster Kalank. The only new Hindi film to open in North America on the 12th was The Tashkent Files, which made just $15,368 from 14 theaters ($1,098 average), according to Bollywood Hungama.
Other Bollywood titles fared little better over the sleepy weekend:
Romeo Akbar Walter: Week 2; $25,698 from 36 theaters; $714 average; $221,648 total
Kesari: Week 4; $19,650 from 16 theaters; $1,228 average; $1,862,580 total
Badla: Week 6; $8,286 from eight theaters; $1,036 average; $1,859,793 total
Gully Boy: Week 9; $422 from one theater; $5,414,386 total
Meanwhile, Andhadhun is burning up the Chinese box office to the tune of $30 million in two weeks! And I thought the $1.3 million it earned here in eleven weeks was impressive!
Brief North American Bollywood box office update for the weekend of March 29-31, 2019. Here’s why the weekend’s two new releases — Junglee and Notebook — won’t get a second week in many theaters:
Junglee: $45,221 from 79 theaters; $572 average
Notebook: $18,877 from 39 theaters; $484 average
My friend who works at my local theater said that, over the weekend, the staff had to tell quite a few disappointed customers that, no, they weren’t running a special engagement of the Ryan Gosling film The Notebook.
Other Bollywood movies still in North American theaters:
Kesari: Week 2; $323,533 from 154 theaters; $2,101 average; $1,600,643 total
Badla: Week 4; $75,736 from 58 theaters; $1,306 average; $1,861,000 total
Gully Boy: Week 7; $9,587 from 12 theaters; $799 average; $5,407,188 total
Luka Chuppi: Week 5; $2,802 from seven theaters; $400 average; $1,014,967 total
I updated my list of Bollywood movies on Netflix with a few additions to start the month of April. The 2019 Hindi thriller 706 — starring Divya Dutta and Atul Kulkarni — is now available for streaming, as is Arshad Warsi’s 2016 comedy The Legend of Michael Mishra. The most intriguing addition is the series Midnight Misadventures with Mallika Dua, in which the comedian cooks with celebrities like Sanya Malhotra, Vicky Kaushal, Huma Qureshi, Rajkummar Rao, and Radhika Apte.
I updated my list of Bollywood movies on Netflix with the premiere of the Netflix Original Marathi movie 15 August. A bunch of Hindi movies expire from the service March 30, so tonight is your last chance to watch these titles:
Shah Rukh Khan’s production company Red Chillies Entertainment has a streaming deal with Netflix that lasts through the end of this year, and I’ve wondered when Zero is going to wind up on Netflix. I checked on the other RCE titles produced since the deal was signed, and Dear Zindagi, Jab Harry Met Sejal, and Ittefaq all became available for streaming five months after their theatrical release. The only exception was Raees, which appeared on the service after four months. We can likely expect Zero to join Netflix at the end of May, maybe end of April. Badla is also an RCE production, so look for that in early July, possibly early June.
From March 22-24, 2019, Akshay Kumar’s Kesari took in $836,065 from 178 North American theaters ($4,697 average), according to Bollywood Hungama. Adding in the $88,308 it earned on its opening day (March 21) brings Kesari‘s four-day total to $924,373.
It took Luka Chuppi four weekends, but the romantic comedy finally crossed the $1 million mark. The $18,920 it earned from 26 theaters over the weekend ($728 average) brought its total to $1,005,283.
With Kesari having passed the $1 million mark itself during the course of the week, Luka Chuppi‘s achievement means that eight of the twelve Hindi movies to release in North America in 2019 have earned at least $1 million. That’s kind of mind-boggling. I expect that ratio to even out a bit with the upcoming weekend’s releases — Junglee and Notebook — likely to fall well short $1 million (though I’m crossing my fingers for Junglee‘s success).
Other Hindi movies still showing in North American theaters:
Badla: Week 3; $237,547 from 97 theaters; $2,449 average; $1,712,624 total
Gully Boy: Week 6; $49,473 from 40 theaters; $1,237 average; $5,381,387 total
Total Dhamaal: Week 5; $4,049 from one theater*; $2,167,632 total
Uri: Week 11; $904 from three theaters; $301 average; $4,185,825 total
*Bollywood Hungama’s report only includes Total Dhamaal‘s Canada earnings for the weekend, not its US earnings. The film’s total is from Box Office Mojo.
Two new Hindi films hit Chicago area theaters on March 29, 2019. Martial artist Vidyut Jammwal plays a veterinarian fighting elephant poachers in the action movie Junglee, directed by American filmmaker Chuck Russell, who previously directed Dwayne Johnson in The Scorpion King and Jim Carrey in The Mask.
Also new this weekend is the Salman Khan Films production Notebook, starring newcomers Pranutan Bahl and Zaheer Iqbal.
Notebook opens Friday at MovieMax, South Barrington 24, and Cantera 17. It has a listed runtime of 1 hr. 52 min.
Opening in wide release across Chicagoland this weekend is Hotel Mumbai, an English-language fictional retelling of the 26/11 terror attacks starring Dev Patel, Anupam Kher, and Armie Hammer. It sounds problematic.
One strange bit of Amazon housekeeping is that Yash Raj Films added new versions of several movies that were already on Prime, and the old links no longer work at all. It’s not that the listing remains and says the movie isn’t available on Prime — you get a “Page Not Found” error when you follow the link. I updated my list with the new links I’ve found, but here they are just in case you’ve got the old links in your bookmarks (if you find any other YRF Amazon Prime links in my list that no longer work, please leave a comment and let me know):
