Avatar Steals A March Over Cirkus

Avatar: The Way of Water did double the business of Cirkus on Friday and then tripled it on the weekend.

The weekend was dominated by last week's Hollywood release Avatar: The Way of Water and the big Bollywood movie, Cirkus.

After the blockbuster success of Drishyam 2, things had finally started looking bright for the Hindi film industry. But Cirkus could not do much. Looks like it's up to Shah Rukh Khan's Republic Day release Pathaan to do the trick.

Movies that have released in the last holiday weekend of 2022 have traditionally done wonders.

Prior to the pandemic, the Akshay Kumar starrer Good Newwz had entered the Rs 200 crore club. Before that, Rohit Shetty and Ranveer Singh's Simmba had also hit a double century.

In 2020, there was no Christmas release due to the pandemic. Last year, Ranveer Singh's '83 had released and was labelled a flop, but it earned at least Rs 100 crore (Rs 1 billion).

Sadly, that will not happen for Cirkus, which saw weekend collections of a total Rs 21 crore (Rs 210 million)*.

Simmba's first day collections were, in comparision, Rs 20.72 crore/Rs 207.2 million.

Leave aside its merits or demerits, Cirkus's daily collections ranged around Rs 6 crore-Rs 7 crore (Rs 60 million to Rs 70 million).

Avatar: The Way of Water did double the business of Cirkus on Friday and then tripled it on the weekend, resulting in a staggering second weekend of Rs 57 crore (Rs 570 million)*.

Numbers like these are indeed extraordinary since on one side, there is the native Indian film industry struggling to get audiences in theatres and on the other, a Hollywood film ends up not just collecting more but emerges as a blockbuster.

The James Cameron film has collected Rs 247 crore (Rs 2.47 billion)* already in just 10 days.

*Estimates. Final numbers awaited.

Note: All collections as per production and distribution sources.