WILL FIGHTER EMERGE AS A BLOCKBUSTER DESPITE LIMITED BUZZ?
The first biggie of 2024, Fighter, is all set to release tomorrow, January 25. The excitement is significant but not as tremendous as one expected.
Fighter is a rare aerial action film of Bollywood and stars Hrithik Roshan, Deepika Padukone and Anil Kapoor. It is directed by Siddharth Anand of Bang Bang, War and Pathaan fame and is also his first production in association with Viacom18 Studios. The teaser was unveiled in December and caught the attention of the moviegoers. Hrithik and Deepika’s pairing also aroused a lot of curiosity since it’s a pair the moviegoers have been waiting for for a long time.
After the teaser, the makers released the songs, which didn’t work well. The trailer was released on January 15 and did scale up the hype a bit. The masses loved the ‘India Occupied Pakistan’ dialogue. Sadly, the netizens had reservations about it and felt the film is too jingoistic.
The advance booking of the film began on Friday evening and took a good start. The ticket sales didn’t increase much after that point. At one point, it seemed like Fighter would open at Rs. 35-40 crores. Now, Rs. 25-30 crores seems to be a more realistic prediction.
Fighter releases a day before Republic Day. The film will have the National Holiday benefit on January 26. If the reports are positive, the evening and night collections on the first day will also be strong and on January 26, the collections can jump to Rs. 40 crores. Once that happens, a four-day weekend of Rs. 125 crores plus is guaranteed. However, if reports are not encouraging, the film will suffer.
Fighter is the only big film in the first quarter of 2024. A lot of expectations are riding on it and here’s hoping it turns out to be the first blockbuster of the year as well since it has the potential.