Bollywood abroad: Waqt shines, Lucky loses

With heavy promotion by Amitabh Bachchan -- who was also in New York to attend the Lincoln Center festival of his films -- and a relentless advertisement campaign, Vipul Shah's Waqt: The Race Against Time was able to get a solid start in North America.

 

Grossing $455,000 over the weekend on 52 screens, the Amitabh-Akshay Kumar starrer took the 19th place on the North American box-office chart. For distributor Eros, who also financed the film, it was more than happy news. It had seen the Salman Khan starrer Lucky: No Time For Love nosedive with less than $200,000 after three weeks. Lucky was luckless in Britain too.

 

With a bigger gross expected in Britain compared to the US, Waqt could hope for at least $2.5 million in the two lucrative markets. In North America, the film will easily gross $1 million, even if it were to plummet by 50 percent, as is the norm for desi films.

 

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The previous Bachchan release Black was quite a big winner abroad, grossing about $2 million in Britain and the US, and about $1 million elsewhere. But unlike Waqt, the song-less Black opened to about $200,000 in its first week in North America and bucked the usual trend of a 50 percent decline. With Bachchan declaring on the Charlie Ross show (though a bit reluctantly) it his best film, the demand for the movie's DVD must have gone up considerably.

 

Apart from Waqt and Black, and not to forget Veer-Zaara, which grossed about $3 million in North America, the desi movie scene has been rather bleak in recent weeks. The much-hyped Mughal-e-Azam, for instance, sunk on both sides of the Atlantic. It took a miserable $160,000 in four weeks in North America and just about $100,000 in Britain.

 

Several factors led to the movie's disappointing run abroad. For one, it arrived abroad several weeks after its triumphant run in India, and illegal DVDs had already invaded the market. Second, many young viewers complained that the restored print did not look all that great. They were comparing it to some of the restored Hollywood classics, complaining that many scenes at the start of Mughal-e-Azam were hazy and out of focus.

 

After a two-month, Gurinder Chadha's Bride & Prejudice is about to give up. The Aishwarya Rai starrer is showing on some 100 screens but in many theatres, it is shown just once or twice a day. It has grossed about $6.5 million in North America. Worldwide its grossed reached $25 million, about $3.2 million coming from Australia and $10.5 million from Britain.