IndicineLBO Update: Industry awaits Baahubali 2 and Half Girlfriend

A lot has changed in the last couple of weeks since our last update. A quick round up:

• Badrinath Ki Dulhania has emerged as the biggest box office success of 2017. It’s the biggest ROI (return-on-investment) hit of the year and the second highest grosser of 2017 – behind Shah Rukh Khan’s Raees. Our prediction of 115 crore was accurate.
• Anushka Sharma’s Phillauri struggled at the box office, failing to even surpass her 2015 adult-rated film ‘NH10’. It’ll finish with lifetime business of around 23 crore.
• Naam Shabana did fairly well in its first weekend, but the trend over the weekend has been poor. Even the Ram Navami holiday hasn’t helped. Reliance Entertainment is likely to lose around 30% of their investment on the film.
• The big news was the clash between Shah Rukh Khan’s untitled film with Imtiaz Ali and Akshay Kumar’s Toilet: Ek Prem Katha. It’s a big weekend but a lot will now depend on the content of the two films.

The big release this month is going to be ‘Baahubali 2’ which is expected to set the all-India box office on fire. A 30 crore plus opening for the Hindi version alone cannot be ruled. A 25 crore plus opening looks almost a certainty at this point in time. We expect ‘Baahubali 2’ to be the first 200 crore grosser of the year. The first film did not get a big initial, but managed to survive the onslaught of even a massive film like ‘Bajrangi Bhaijaan’. If the second part is anywhere close to as good as the first film, ‘Baahubali 2’ will shatter every single existing box office record in India.

The other big release is ‘Half Girlfriend’ in May. The film is based on Chetan Bhagat’s novel, has Mohit Suri as director and the star-cast is good too with Arjun Kapoor and Shraddha Kapoor playing the lead roles. It’s expected to have one of the best music albums of the year, which does add tremendous value to a romantic film. There are other factors in favour of ‘Half Girlfriend’ too; it’s the first major Hindi release after ‘Badrinath Ki Dulhania’, it has a similar release to ‘Tanu Weds Manu Returns’ which also released just before the conclusion of the IPL and the last week before Ramzan should also increase the footfalls of the muslim audience in theatres (like Ek Villain).

Overall, before the Salman Khan juggernaut ‘Tubelight’ towards the end of June – ‘Baahubali 2: The Conclusion’ and ‘Half Girlfriend’ are the two major releases. There’s ‘Raabta’ too. We also have films like ‘Meri Pyaari Bindu’, ‘Sarkar 3’, ‘Noor’, ‘Begum Jaan’ and a few other lined up for release.