Can Barfi join the 100 crore club?

If any film truly deserves a place in the coveted ‘100 crore club’, it’s Anurag Basu’s Barfi. The film has opened to a fantastic response, collecting Rs 41 crores in 4 days.

Now the big question – Can Barfi join the 100 crore club? Let’s analyse.

Factors in favour of Barfi crossing 100 crores

• The word-of-mouth is terrific, arguably the best for any film this year. The two other films to enjoy a similar response – Kahaani and Vicky Donor – went from strength-to-strength after the initial weekend.
• There is a holiday on Wednesday in several parts of the country for Ganesha Chaturthi and Barfi is likely to benefit. The film is likely to end it’s first week with 55-57 crores of business – which is on par with Raaz 3, even though Barfi had a smaller release and was a film pre-dominantly targeted at multiplex audiences.
• Barfi has tremendous repeat-value. We know a lot of people who have watched it more than twice in theatre.

Factors against Barfi

• The release of Heroine this weekend is likely to impact Barfi. But since both films are UTV productions, they are likely to ensure both have enough shows at multiplexes.
• The first four day figures of Barfi is slightly lower than Bol Bachchan, which just about managed to cross 100 crores. Again, since Barfi  is mainly targeted at multiplex audience, it might find it slightly difficult without any support from single-screens.

Either way, Barfi is likely to be Ranbir Kapoor’s biggest solo-hit and has a good chance of going past multiplex-hits like Cocktail and Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara. 100 crores would be icing on the cake.