Fitoor Weekend Box Office Collections

Fitoor has proved to be a non-starter at the box office, as the film is now certain to be the biggest disaster so far this year. The Katrina Kaif starrer collected Rs 3.61 crore on Friday, showed decent growth on Saturday with business of around 4.54 crore and completed its first week with Rs 5.96 crore coming on Sunday.

Sunday was a holiday plus there was the added advantage of Valentine’s Day, when footfalls at theatres increase quite significantly. However, it wasn’t going to be enough for Fitoor as the Sunday level is where the film had to be on Day 1.

A 6 crore opening would have given the film a decent base to grow, but the kind of rejection the film has faced all over, even that wouldn’t have been enough.

The total of Rs 14 crore in its first weekend is way too low for a film that has to collect upwards of Rs 70 crore to recover costs. Fitoor is likely to finish with net box office collections of less than 25 crore, which would mean share of less than 13 crore.

The drop of Monday is big at some centres and the ticket prices at centres where it was recording decent collections also comes down during weekdays. There isn’t much hope left, as Fitoor brings Katrina Kaif’s glorious career to a screeching halt.

She was inarguably the most successful actress of her generation, someone who against all odds and lack of acting talent, managed to rise to the top of the industry through hard work, dedication and obviously her stunning beauty. But at 32, age is no longer on her side. Jagga Jasoos has been delayed endless for nearly 2 years now and she has Baar Baar Dekho opposite Sidharth Malhotra later this year.

Day	Fitoor	Growth / Drop Percentage
Day 1 (Friday)	3.61	-
Day 2 (Saturday)	4.54	+ 31%
Day 3 (Sunday)	5.96	+ 31%
India Total Collections	14.11 crore

We have been receiving a lot of mails asking why went wrong for Fitoor and why such a costly niche film was planned in the first place. We posted our point-of-view in the QnA session yesterday, so do read:

“From the makers point of view, Abhishek Kapoor’s first two films were also niche, Rock On and Kai Po Che. But both did fairly well at the box office. When Fitoor was planned, Katrina was the top female star in the industry and Aditya Roy Kapur was coming after a big film like ‘Aashiqui 2’. So they probably thought the interesting pairing might work, along with Abhishek Kapoor as director.

A lot also depends on the timing of release, because careers can change any Friday. Anurag Basu and Ranbir decided to produce Jagga Jasoos soon after the success of Barfi, but look at where the film is now. It once had everything going for it, now almost nothing. Both the lead stars, who were back then one of the tops stars in the industry, are now going through the lowest phase in their respective careers.

It’s easy to ridicule the makers with the benefit of hindsight, but no filmmaker, actor or producer sets out to do a film that they believe is certain to fail.

Getting the economics right is also difficult, because every director has a certain vision for his films. Tamasha would have probably worked if it was not shot at a exotic foreign location. A film like Badlapur would fail if it was made on a budget of 35-40 crore. At the same time, if there is compromise made on the budget and the product is not upto expectations scale and setting wise, it might again disappoint the audience and fail at the box office”