WILL SELFIEE BE ABLE TO OPEN MORE THAN SHEHZADA?
The last week was a disappointment for the industry as both Shehzada and Ant-Man And The Wasp: Quantumania underperformed. Shehzada is expected to collect around Rs. 30-32 crores in its lifetime while Ant-Man And The Wasp: Quantumania will struggle to reach the Rs. 40 crores mark. The industry is now looking forward to seeing how Selfiee performs, although the hopes are minimal.
Selfiee stars Akshay Kumar, Emraan Hashmi, Nushrratt Bharuccha and Diana Penty. It is directed by Raj Mehta of Good Newwz and JugJugg Jeeyo fame and is an official remake of the 2019 Malayalam film, Driving License. The trailer is decent and the remix of the song ‘Main Khiladi Tu Anari’, featuring Akshay Kumar and Emraan Hashmi, has got noticed. The makers have gone all out to promote the film. Yesterday, Akshay Kumar set a Guinness World Record for clicking as many as 184 selfies with his fans in less than three minutes!
However, the buzz for the film is limited. Thankfully, the original version isn’t available in the Hindi dubbed version. But the storyline from Selfiee’s trailer reminds viewers of Fan, starring Shah Rukh Khan.
Last week, Shehzada’s booking opened very early and it led to negativity as hardly a few thousand tickets were sold. Probably, the makers of Selfiee didn’t want a repeat of this fiasco. Hence, Selfiee’s booking was opened late, on Wednesday evening. As expected, the advance is not much.
Shehzada opened at Rs. 5.75 crores and the aim of Selfiee should be to go beyond this number and open in the range of Rs. 6-7 crores. A weekend of Rs. 25-30 crores would be ideal. If the word of mouth is positive, it can have a clean run for 12 days until the release of Tu Jhoothi Main Makkaar on March 8. And if reports are bad, it might have a lifetime similar to that of Shehzada.