PK set to be highest grossing film overseas?

With a nearly $26 million gross from 22 territories including India, Rajkumar Hirani and Aamir Khan’s  PK was at number four in the world box office over the weekend for distributor UTV.

A powerful $3.4 million of that came from North America where it is being shown on some 270 screens.

With excellent word-of-mouth and positive reviews in The New York Times, PK could be the highest grossing Hindi film of all times in the foreign market.

The NYT called the film ‘a sweet, ambling comedy.’ It wrote: ‘Mr Hirani remains an excellent storyteller, weaving his disparate story strands into a convincing, satisfying whole -- a rare Bollywood feat.’

But it criticised the film for lacking the sting as a satire and mistook the Bhojpuri dialect for Hindi.

With the lucrative holiday period around the corner, PK could eclipse the $25 million overseas record of Hirani and Aamir’s 3 Idiots. In North America, PK was the tenth highest grossing film over the weekend.

PK is the first film in India tracked by the international agency Rentrak which collects data directly from the theatres daily.

The highest grossing film worldwide over the weekend was Hobbit: The Battle of Five Armies, which grossed a muscular $161 million from some 70 territories.

More amazing was the success of the Chinese action-drama, Gone with the Bullets, which debuted in China to a rousing $36 million, according to Rentrak.

UTV will continue PK on the same number of screens in North America in its second week, expecting a smaller than 60 per cent decline for Bollywood films in their second week.