With decent to good word of mouth coming its way, Happy Bhag Jayegi has seen increase in footfalls on every passing day. The first weekend collections for the Mudassar Aziz directed film reads as 10.5 crore, which is fair considering the scale at which it is set as well as the cast that it boasts of. That said, the production values of this Eros and Aanand L. Rai film are decent, which means Happy Bhag Jayegi needs to collect more before it can begin to breathe easier.
It is in fact quite surprising to note that Happy Bhag Jayegi is practically the first notable romcom film to have released in 2016. There was a time when at least one major romcom used to arrive on a monthly basis but somehow this year even though 60 odd Hindi films have released, there has been practically no romcom arrival. The only one that came close was Kareena Kapoor Khan and Arjun Kapoor’s Ki & Ka but that was inherently a dramatic outing with several serious moments in there. On the other extreme was Girish Kumar’s Loveshhuda which unfortunately went totally unnoticed.
Meanwhile historic drama Mohenjo Daro couldn’t really benefit from lack of major competition in the form of a new release. In fact it collected even lesser than Happy Bhag Jayegi and was the third choice of the filmgoers with Rustom still leading from the front. Its second weekend collections are a mere 6 crore*, which is a steep fall from 30.54 crore (which was low in itself) that was collected in the first weekend. At 57 crore* currently, it is a commercial flop.
*Final numbers awaited
Note: All collections as per production and distribution sources
Joginder Tuteja tweets @tutejajoginder