Endhiran collects 2nd highest 100 crore week behind Dabangg, seeks 3I record

Ranbir Kapoor's antecedants, Rishi and Neetu Kapoor have a film out on their own. Do Dooni Char has opened to poor collections but good appreciation in a small release.

Emran Hashmi's Crook on the other hand has opened to a very poor response and can be termed a box office flop already. Weekend collections are under 8 crores gross.

As reported earlier, Sidhharth Anand's Anjaana Anjaani overseas caper has come out flat. The Ranbir Kapoor-Priyanka chopra has flopped after doing about 48 crore gross for the week (Rs. 35 crores net), mostly from multiplexes. The film was poor all along in the single screens. Infact though both are poor, Robot (Hindi) is faring better than Anjaana Anjaani in 2nd weekend around the north. Ranbir Kapoor will have to settle with the 130 crore grosser Rajneeti being his biggest grosser this year.

Rajnikanth's Endhiran-The Robot grossed a 100 crore opening week in India from multiple versions, with half of it coming from one state: Tamil Nadu. The Tamil film has generated a gross of upto 50 crores from Tamil Nadu theaters (though some dispute this figure as occupancies in rural centers outside Chennai where ticket rates are as low as Rs. 10/ are not said to be same as Chennai), but another 26-28 crores gross can be safely said to have come from AP in the north; and another 8 crores from Karnataka/Kerala notwithstanding very limited print release in Karnataka as per local state chamber regulations of karnataka. For example, most of Karanatka's 13 prints of Enthiran are in Bangalore (10) where the movie tickets are at Rs. 450 in some theaters like Inox Malleshwaram. Occupancies there were 80-85% for the week. The hindi version Robot has been poor in rest of India with 18-20 crores gross but that's better than any other film to have come out of the south.

However Endhiran's first week gross is less than Dabangg's 120 crore opening week gross last month across India. Infact Dabangg in southern center of Bangalore was about 60% gross of Endhiran and pretty comptetitive with Endhiran in Andhra's biggest center Hyderabad also logging to the tune of 70%+ business of Endhiran down there; whereas the gap between Endhiran and Dabangg in the northern and central cities opening was much bigger. And being a Hindi film, Dabangg's collections were far more uniformly spread out through out the country. However Endhiran box office may be able to pass the salman Khan starrer in the long term since it's being viewed as an 'event' in Tamil cinema and its weekend 2 where its running well is tracing week 1 fairly well especially TN. Dabangg had only a Hindi version and that dropped by 50% in week 2. If Endhiran does remain steadier week after week then, Endhiran will likely emerge top grosser of India this year, unless some Hindi film releasing on Diwali (Action Replay, Golmaal) is able to put up bigger numbers. Raju Hirani's 3 Idiots currently holds the All India record of about Rs 300 crores gross, set about 10 months back.

But once again, segments in media are talking of net collections or shares of Enthiran and comparing it to bollywood hits without explaining the real dynamics of these type of figures. It's worth again pointing out comparing net collection of a tamil film from tamil nadu to net collection of a hindi film is a false comparision; as are some other points of relative ignorance out there about economy at large. For example UP state, which has a higher GDP than Tamil Nadu overall, has nonetheless historically imposed a very high entertainment tax on cinema of Hindi films compared to the reverse policy of zero amount that Tamil Nadu govt. imposes on Tamil films.

So a hindi film that reports Rs. 20 crore nett collection in UP has actually generated close to Rs. 35 crores GROSS in UP box office because of 60% entertainment tax imposed by UP which means the gross is almost 1.7 times the net collection reported from there; whereas due to 0% tax for Tamil films in Tamil Nadu, a film which claims the same Rs 20 crore nett from Tamil Nadu has only infact done only Rs. 20 crore gross business also. Gross is the figure that's actually being generated from ticket sales not nett. Gross minus Entertainment tax of a given state = nett. So the nett *is* the gross for Tamil films in TN whereas this works out quite different for Bollywood films in much of the Indian North and beyond (ex. Maharashtra).

In general in terms of reach, the collection of a top Bollywood grosser in south is going to be a lot closer to Endhiran than Endhiran's collection in north are going to be closer to a 3I or Dabangg in Delhi or Punjab for example. Though to be fair, Rajnikanth is an exception from south in that he is somewhat more popular in UP-Bihar going back to his appearance in Hindi movies like Uttar Dakshin, Geraftar and Hum and Robot (Hindi) has not done too badly there.

And regardless of lack of complete verifiability of actual collections, success of Endhiran is a major achievement for Rajnikanth. His onetime correlate in Bollywood, Amitabh Bachchan, has largely reduced himself to character actor theme. Others like Dilip Kumar never gave a solo hit past age 48. Dharmendra's last hit was at age 54, nevermind bonafide blockbuster anywhere.

Moving ahead, there are no major releases till Akshay Kumar's Action Replay and Ajay Devgan starrer Golmaal 3 which hit on Diwali week, often a big one at the box office.