UPDATED
MUMBAI: Five new Hollywood and Bollywood released kept the theaters buzzing over this past weekend. The movies that were released were Warner Bros’ Inception, Disney’s The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, UTV Motion Pictures’ Udaan, Walkwater Media’s Tere Bin Laden and GS Entertainment’s Lamhaa.
While the Sanjay Dutt – Bipasha Basu starrer Lamhaa did net collections of Rs 57.50 million (Rs 5.75 crore), the Christopher Nolan directed Inception did a net business of Rs 56 million (Rs 5.60 crore) in India over the weekend. However, it must be kept in mind that Lamhaa released with a much higher print count (900 prints) than Inception (300 prints).
Inception released in four languages with 300 prints, which include English (120 prints), Hindi (90 prints), Tamil (45 prints) and Telugu (45 print).
"Inception has a style and a great concept. It opened well at our locations and almost everybody had praised the film. I got inputs from celebs and regular cine-goers who are raving about this amazing Christopher Nolan film. The film has touched an altogether different level in film-making. It has tremendous repeat value and we are confident that the film will generate strong revenue here," said Cinemax India president Devang Sampat.
"Across BIG Cinemas, the weekend occupancies for Inception were very strong, ranging from as high as 94% at some of the cinemas to close at an average of 50% for all language versions. Tier II Cinemas averaged 60% in the opening weekend and of course, the IMAX version, which had a fantastic run at our cinema in Mumbai, is all a testimony to the mass appeal of a single idea working superbly, no matter how dreamy, if translated flawlessly," added Big Cinemas COO Ashish Saksena.
Inception took the fourth biggest opening weekend of all time for a Warner Bros film beating Superman Returns by nine per cent. It has also become the second biggest opening weekend of 2010 for a Warner film beating Sherlock Holmes by 396 per cent.
On the other hand, Tere Bin Laden did a net business of approximately Rs 35 million (Rs 3.50 crore) over the weekend. The movie’s India distributor – Boney Kapoor’s BSK Network & Entertainment – is planning to widen the release by an additional 40-50 prints in the second week. In the overseas, the movie has so far collected $150,000 from the UK, UAE, and Australian territories. The US and Pakistan release of the film is also in the pipeline.
UTV’s Udaan managed to collect Rs 11.50 million (Rs 1.15 crore) in its opening weekend.
