MUMBAI: New Bollywood release – Anurag Kashyap and Viacom 18’s ‘Aiyyaa’ directed by Sachin Kundalkar has seen a disastrous opening at the Box Office in its first weekend.
Starring Bollywood ‘queen’ Rani Mukerji and south star Prithviraj the film is a romantic comedy with the tagline of ‘Go Wakda’.
As reported by businessofcinema.com, on its first day of nationwide release the film garnered an extremely poor approximate Rs 16 million (Rs 1.60 crore) net with only a 20% occupancy.
Friday, the film opened to crushing reviews from critics who called the comedy burlesque and hard to stomach. Poor word of mouth gave the film no impetus – and Saturday Sunday did not show any great improvement.
The three day total of ‘Aiyyaa’ is in the range Rs 47 million (Rs 4.7 crore) net.
While Rani’s performance and her no holds barred dancing style – from lavni to belly jiggling has been appreciated by most, the cinegoers are still preferring Akshay Kumar’s ‘OMG, Oh My God’, and Sridevi’s comeback ‘English Vinglish’ to ‘Aiyyaa’.
Other new releases this week – Manisha Koirala’s ‘Bhoot Returns’, Telugu remake ‘Makkhi’, and ‘Chittagong’ are performing even worse at the Box Office. Seeing a major drop on Saturday, ‘Bhoot Returns’ has collected close to Rs 30 million (Rs 3 crore) net. Filmmaker Ram Gopal Varma who has recently been tweeting insults for Karan Johar’s upcoming ‘Student of The Year’, will have to swallow back his pride and eat a humble pie.
