Until Saiyaara last year, for about a decade, the premier Bollywood production house, YRF, had found HITs with just their Spy Verse films or Rani Mukherjee starrer. This week will see another YRF-Rani Mukherjee starrer, the third film in the Mardaani franchise, Mardaani 3, which is showing decent traction in advances at the Indian box office.
The advances opened quite late, just yesterday, and they had a low but encouraging start. At the time of writing, the Rani Mukherjee starrer has sold around 9K tickets at the national chains, PVRINOX and Cinepolis. By the end of the day, this figure should reach 15K, possibly 20K. The bulk of advances and then the collections will come from the national chains, which is perfectly fine, as the film does not need to do well everywhere.
One thing which has been going wrong with films lately is that the costs have increased a lot. A film which used to cost X a couple of years ago has increased to 2X, some even going 3X. Mardaani 3 has done well in this regard as the film has been made in controlled budget. While it does cost 2x of Mardaani 2, that is still quite manageable if the film gets the reception right, as non-theatrical recoveries are quite good as well.
The other thing which has been plaguing the films in this zone and the industry in general is the ridiculously short streaming window, which currently stands at just eight weeks. This has been discussed at length in the past, but nothing seems to be changing, so for now it is something that has to be lived with, unless, of course, things change. That would be a big plus for the cinema.
The first two Mardaani films did well at the box office. From advances, it looks like Mardaani 3 will open to a similar range around Rs. 3-3.50 crore. That number may rise to Rs. 4 crore or more if the reception from morning pushes evening shows higher. From that start, with good growth over the weekend, the film could have a run. All of this is inferred purely from the momentum in advances. The important part is to get the reception right tomorrow.
