Valentine’s Day weekend will see two new releases: O’ Romeo, directed by Vishal Bhardwaj and starring Shahid Kapoor, and the creature-horror-love story Tu Yaa Main, featuring Shanaya Kapoor. Of the two, O’ Romeo is clearly the bigger film in terms of scale and cost, though neither appears to be getting an initial. Valentine’s Day is not a holiday, but it remains a lucrative day for the box office. It would have been better if that boost was there on Friday, but it will be on Saturday, which is anyways weekend, although with Valentine’s Day, the weekend spike will be bigger than normal.
O’ Romeo is the fourth collabaration between Vishal Bhardwaj and Shahid Kapoor. The director’s box office track record is dismal, but two of the three films with Shahid have performed better. Having said that, the outlook on this one doesn’t look that promising, with music and trailer not hitting the mark. That is visible in advances, which are quite low. At the time of writing, the film has sold just over 15K tickets at the national chains for the first day, with the final number looking likely to be around 25K. That will be higher than 18K of Devaa but lower than 33K of Teri Baaton Main Uljha Jiya.
Making things difficult is the fact that the film is very pricey, costing over Rs. 100 crore to produce and release. The non-theatrical recoveries are good on face value but leave a lot for theatrical, and since the initial doesn’t seem to be coming, it will be highly dependent on reports being positive and then growing on them.
Tu Yaa Main had an interesting teaser, but hasn’t pushed much further since then. Hit music could have helped. The advances are pretty much nothing, with around 1K tickets sold at the national chains so far. The hope will be for the reception to be positive, and if so, it could jump well on Saturday and then sustain from there.