The movie touched the Rs 2 billion (Rs 200 crores) mark, which includes worldwide box office collections and some ancillary rights like satellite.
Even after three weeks of release, the buzz around the movie refuses to die down. Three factors played a critical role in making Ghajini the phenomenon that it is today.
1) Brand Aamir Khan
2) Content
3) Marketing & Distribution strategy
Studio 18 CEO Sandeep Bhargava says, "The movie has received an overwhelming response and has had historical opening and collections."
Credit goes to the movie’s India distributors Studio 18, which pulled all stops to ensure that the movie got the widest simultaneous release across the country. The movie was released across 150 screens simultaneously in C&D category towns and districts with a population of less than 30,000, where prints are usually sent two or even three weeks after the movie’s initial run.
While on the multiplex front, PVR Cinemas Bangalore property came out shining with maximum collections of Rs 14.50 million (Rs 1.45 crores), which is the all time record collections for any theater in the history of Indian cinema in any language. PVR Cinemas’ Ashish Saxena says, "Two weeks prior to the release of the film, there was word going around in the market that Ghajini is not a multiplex film. But it has been proven wrong."
Amongst the single screens Chennai based Sathyam Cinema had the highest collections from the movie with approximately Rs 6.2 million (Rs 62 lakhs) in three weeks. This is also the highest collections that a Hindi movie has ever garnered in the South. Sathyam Cinemas director Swaroop Reddy informs, "In the first week the movie collected Rs 33 lakhs, the second and third week collections stood at Rs 19 lakhs and Rs 9 lakhs respectively."
Amongst the territories, Bombay and Thane collected the highest with Rs 240 million (Rs 24 crores), whereas second was the Delhi – NCR region where the movie collected Rs 180 million (Rs 18 crores).
A theater owner from Nagothane (a district in Raigadh) Milind Jain said, "’No movie has ever got a simultaneous release in our district. I want to thank Studio 18 and am very grateful to them for giving us this opportunity. Ghajini has collected Rs 1.25 lakhs in our theatre until now. This is really huge for us since no movie collects more than a maximum of Rs 25,000 from here."
Aamir Khan added, "I want to thank each and every theater owner for the kind of release that they have given Ghajini."
At the second success party of the movie’s unprecedented run at the box office, the movie’s producers Madhu Mantena and Tagore Madhu gifted Aamir Khan and director AR Murugadoss with gold statuette depicting Khan’s look from the movie.
