Te3n‘s North American debut fell a little short of expectations. During the weekend of June 10-12, 2016, the Amitabh Bachchan thriller earned $250,677 from 116 theaters ($2,161 average). It released into the seventh largest number of theaters for the year, but its opening weekend total was only ninth best, and its opening weekend average just eleventh best. Distributor Reliance Films was probably hoping for numbers closer to what Bachchan earned in January with another thriller, Wazir, which opened with $575,908 from 127 theaters ($4,535 average).

Housefull 3 held over well in its second weekend of release. Its business fell by about two-thirds, which is actually good for this year. A movie only has to retain 20% of its opening weekend business to place in the top half of Bollywood films released in North America in 2016. The comedy added another $224,510 from 112 theaters ($2,005 average) to bring its total to $1,139,998. Thus far, Housefull 3 is performing on par with its predecessors.

I’ve written before about how — though the United States and Canada are considered one North American territory for box office reporting purposes — the countries have different taste in Bollywood films, and this weekend provided the best evidence of that yet. Canadians ignored the new release Te3n and turned out for two-week-old Housefull 3 at a margin of nearly two-to-one. Here’s the subset of Canadian data broken out from the totals above:

• Housefull 3: $51,837 from fourteen theaters ($3,703 average)
• Te3n: $22,088 from twelve theaters ($1,841 average)

Damn, Canadians love their broad comedies almost as much as they love their action movies! In contrast, Te3n averaged $2,198 per screen in the US, and Housefull 3 averaged $1,762.

Sarbjit played for a fourth weekend in one theater, earning $386 to bring its total to $244,274.

Source: Rentrak, via Bollywood Hungama