Kalank‘s second weekend in North American theaters could have been worse, but it was still pretty bad. From April 26-28, 2019, the period drama earned $278,720 from 283 theaters ($985 average), according to Box Office Mojo. That brings its 12-day total to $2,482,587.
For perspective on Kalank‘s performance, I looked at the 25 most widely released Hindi films in North America since 2014 (excluding multilingual movies like Baahubali 2) to see how they fared from their first weekend to their second. Kalank released into the 8th highest number of theaters in its opening weekend (320), and it ranks 10th in terms of second-weekend theater count (283). Nevertheless, its second-weekend gross of $278,720 ranks way down in 18th (the median is $600,000). Its per-screen average of $985 is even worse, tied for 20th place with Zero. Only six movies among the 25 failed to average $1,000/screen in their second weekends here: Kalank, Zero, Jab Harry Met Sejal, Tubelight, Thugs of Hindostan, and Befikre. This is not a group any movie wants to be a part of.
To be fair to Kalank, it was up against literally the toughest box office competition of all time in Avengers: Endgame, which broke pretty much every record on its way to earning $1.2 billion globally in its opening weekend. That Kalank did as well as it did is kind of remarkable, especially since — at least in the Chicago region — a number of theaters gave Kalank only one showing a day at off-peak times in order to accommodate more showings of Avengers. Still, Kalank‘s underwhelming-on-paper showing will likely cause it to drop at least 2/3 of its remaining theaters in North America come Weekend 3.
Other Hindi movies showing in North American theaters:
- The Tashkent Files: Week 3; $6,355 from five theaters; $1,271 average; $44,542 total
- Kesari: Week 6; $1,972 from three theaters; $657 average; $1,901,536 total
- Badla: Week 8; $348 from two theaters; $174 average; $1,863,181 total
Sources: Bollywood Hungama and Box Office Mojo