The triple delight of Gadar 2, OMG 2 and Jailer released over the past weekend and several big-ticket releases slated for the rest of the year have brought back much-needed mojo to theatres, which are yet to fully bounce back after the pandemic, especially due to a lull in Bollywood box office collections.
“Gadar 2, OMG 2 and Jailer have all done very well. At Miraj, we saw the highest-ever footfalls of 1.86 lakh on Sunday (August 13, 2023),” said Amit Sharma, MD of Entertainment at Miraj Group which owns Miraj Cinemas.
The largest multiplex chain PVR INOX also informed the stock exchanges that it achieved the highest-ever admissions and box office in a single day on August 13. “We entertained 12.8 lakh guests and earned gross box office revenue of Rs 39.5 crore,” it said in a statement.
The three films together have made more than Rs 400 crore in net collections till August 15.
Singling out the success of Gadar 2 which has made a whopping Rs 173 crore in net collections within four days of its release, Sharma said the Sunny Deol-starrer is the kind of mass entertainer that works well with audiences in smaller cities and towns as well, much like last year’s Telugu and Kannada blockbusters of RRR, Pushpa: The Rise – Part 1, KGF: Chapter 2.
Exhibitors are confident of the Indian gross box office collection for CY2023 surpassing the Rs 10,637 crore it did last year. The cumulative India box office for Jan-June 2023 releases stands at Rs 4,868 crore (gross), which is 15% lower than the same period in 2022, according to a report by consultancy firm Ormax Media.
At this rate, 2023 is expected to end at Rs 9,736 crore, which will be 8% lower than the annual 2022 box office of Rs 10,637 crore. However, the second half of 2023 has a strong lineup of films that are expected to perform well, especially Jawan, Salaar, and Tiger 3. This puts the year in good stead to surpass the 2022 gross box office, or at least get very close to it, the report said.
“My estimation is that the gross box office collections in 2023 will be between Rs 10,000 and Rs 11,000 crore. Three-four more films working well will do the trick,” said Tushar Dhingra, Founding CEO of Dhishoom Cinemas. He added that it would be the best year ever for Indian exhibitors if the collections touch the Rs 11,000-crore-mark.
Betting on big-ticket films coming up in the remaining four months of 2023 such as Jawan (Shahrukh Khan, Hindi), Salaar (Prabhas, Telugu), Tiger 3 (Salman Khan, Hindi), Leo (Vijay, Tamil), Animal (Ranbir Kapoor, Hindi) and Dunki (Shahrukh Khan, Hindi), Miraj’s Sharma is optimistic of doing 15-20% higher collections than last year.
“There was no memorable film last July-August. Brahmastra did good business in September. Last Diwali was one of the worst in recent years, and Cirkus in December 2022 also failed,” said Sharma. Adding that it was a struggle last year to pull crowds to the theatres except for the blockbusters seen earlier in the year, he is sure of drawing 1.75 crore footfalls at Miraj this financial year compared to the 1.32 crore they did last year.
The record for gross box office collections is held by 2019, which closed at Rs 10,948 crore, followed by 2022, which is the only other year when the Rs 10,000 crore mark was surpassed. If 2023 crosses that mark, two back-to-back years higher than Rs 10,000 crore will be a definitive confirmation that Indian box office is alive and kicking, even though the kind of films that are delivering may have changed since the pandemic, according to the Ormax report.