Entertainment Hit or Flop: Box Office Prediction

Akshay Kumar’s Entertainment opens in theatres today. The film marks the directorial debut of Sajid Samji and Farhad Samji, the writers behind several Rohit Shetty entertainers like Sunday, Golmaal Returns, Golmaal 3, Bol Bachchan and Chennai Express. They have also been credited as co-writers for films like Ready and Chashme Baddoor.

Coming to the box office prospects of ‘Entertainment’, the pre-release reports are excellent, the theatrical trailer and promos have been generally liked, music also has been gaining popularity and Akshay Kumar returns after a good outing with ‘Holiday: A Solider Is Never Off Duty’ – even though it was the first ’Post-IPL’ release in the last 4 years that didn’t open to extraordinarily good numbers and relied more on word-of-mouth publicity to recover costs. The marketing campaign too has been better than Holiday.

However, the two major problems for ‘Entertainment’ is its release date and costs. The film releases at a time when Salman Khan’s Kick is still going pretty well at the box office and a big film like ‘Singham Returns’ releases a week after ‘Entertainment’. Like ‘Holiday’ the costs are on the higher side, what with individual distributors paying a premium as minimum guarantee. ‘Entertainment’ would have to collect more than 100 crore just to recover costs and the film would be declared a commercial success if it manages to collect anything more than 100.

In short, ‘Entertainment’, like most other Akshay Kumar films in recent times, will rely on word-of-mouth publicity to carry it through to safety.

A better release date would have given the film some breathing space because ‘Entertainment’ has one week to collect as much as it can. To recover most of the investment in 7 days, it has to collect at least 15 crore on its opening day and 50 crore in its opening weekend – which looks highly unlikely looking at the response the advance booking has got.

Screens: The film is releasing on 2700-2800 screens approx across India.

Entertainment Box Office Predictions

We expect the film to collect around Rs 11 crore on its opening day at the box office (Holiday collected 11.5 cr). If the content is liked, Entertainment could go on to collect around 37-38 crore in its first weekend.

IF VERY GOOD (positive word-of-mouth)

• Day 1 – 11 cr
• Day 2 - 12.5 cr
• Day 3 - 14.5 cr (Sunday)
• Weekend - 38 cr
• First Week - 65 cr
• Final - 95 cr+ (Semi Hit / HIT)

IF AVERAGE (mixed response)

• Day 1 - 10.5 cr
• Day 2 – 11.5 cr
• Day 3 – 13 cr (Sunday)
• Weekend – 35 cr
• First Week – 58 cr
• Final – 80 cr (Average)

IF BAD (worst case scenario)

• Day 1 - 10 cr
• Day 2 – 11 cr
• Day 3 – 12 cr (Sunday)
• Weekend – 33 cr
• First Week – 47 cr
• Final – 60 cr (Flop)

Again, the big problem for ‘Entertainment’ is, even if it turns out to be an excellent comedy, it might still rely on the response that ‘Singham Returns’ gets. If the Rohit Shetty – Ajay Devgn film is liked, ‘Entertainment’ would struggle to go beyond the 100 crore mark even in the best case scenario.

Having said that, box office is extremely unpredictable. If ‘Entertainment’ lives up to its title of providing wholesome entertainment and somehow manages opening day business of 14 cr+ it might go on to be a fairly successful film.

The overall tone of the box office prediction might sound a little negative to our readers here, but that is only because of the release date and costs. Competing against two big films, especially when multiplexes tickets are priced so high is extremely difficult for any film. Not many can afford three movie outings in a month!

How much do you think ‘Entertainment’ will collect at the India box office? Hit or Flop? Vote and do post your views in the comments section below.