Jhoom Barabar Jhoom : Opening Box Office

Jhoom Barabar Jhoom coming from the all conquering Yashraj banner was expected to take the country by storm but instead it has left the industry in shock. The opening is not bad and it still may notch up the highest first week billing of 2007 but the hype generated especially by the superhit music could not translate into the expected bumper opening. The film did get the bumper 90%+ opening at some stations of Punjab and Haryana, this could be because that the music had a major punjabi feel or the Deol name which works in the circuit initially even for rank bad films like Big Brother and Shaka Laka Boom Boom.

If the opening was not upto the mark then the reports were even worse and this started to tell at places like Gwalior and Patna as collections started to drop further. The reports suggest it will find it very hard to hold up even in Punjab and Haryana where the opening was strong.

As far as opening is concerned it was best in East Punjab followed by Mumbai(75%) and then Delhi/NCR(70%). In the South the opening was poor due to the Tamil film Shivaji releasing on the same day. Some centres in Nizam showed just 40% opening. The Central India circuits also showed just a 50% opening.

The silver lining is that despite poor reports the banner has a lot of goodwill with the public so they may still go for the film. Also YRF get a great chain of theatres for nearly all their films. These high grossing theatres with multiple shows should enable the film to recover costs as long as it does not completely crash from Monday onwards.

(Box office India . com)