It has been a major heartbreak for Bollywood this festive season.
With the festival of Raksha Bandhan falling on Thursday, the date was perfect for Bollywood biggies Raksha Bandhan and Laal Singh Chaddha to release in theatres.
After all, the Thursday release would have given a very good boost to the collections over the five day extended weekend, which would have continued right till Monday with the big holiday of Independence Day.
In fact, bets were being placed on which of the two movies will hit the century crore first, and in how much time.
Given the fact that Aamir Khan was releasing a film after four years, Laal Singh Chaddha was a much bigger film too with Kareena Kapoor Khan as the leading lady and the remake of the Hollywood classic Forrest Gump as the trump card. It was widely anticipated that this film would reach there first.
However, for now it is quite improbable that Laal Singh Chaddha will score a century even in its lifetime.
The film opened much below expectations at Rs 11.70 crore (Rs 117 million) and then just could not see any sort of momentum coming its way right till Sunday.
As a matter of fact, the collections fell on Friday (Rs 7.26 crore/Rs 72.6 million) only to see little revival on Saturday (Rs 9 crore/Rs 90 million) and then Sunday (Rs 10 crore/Rs 100 million).
All of this means that even a miracle on Monday can't really save LSC, which has collected only Rs 37.96 crore (Rs 379.6 million) so far.
The same goes for Raksha Bandhan, which has earned only Rs 28.16 crore (Rs 281.6 million) so far.
The Aanand L Rai directed film had a trajectory on an even lesser starting point of Rs 8.20 crore (Rs 82 million) on Thursday. On Friday, it reached Rs 6.40 crore (Rs 62 million), and Saturday stayed surprisingly very flat at Rs 6.51 crore (Rs 65.1 million).
There was some sort of improvement on Sunday at Rs 7.05 crore (Rs 70.5 million), but that's not optimal either as the film should have reached a double digit score by then, something that just doesn't seem to be coming for this Akshay Kumar movie.
Note: All collections as per production and distribution sources.
