Rajkumar Hirani's "3 Idiots" has achieved an all-time high of a worldwide theatrical gross of Rs 93 crore for the opening weekend, its distributors said today.

Reliance Big Pictures, a part of the Reliance Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group (ADAG), said this was the highest box office opening for an Indian film worldwide.

It said the collections in the first four days, from Friday till today, were more than Rs 100 crores.

According to it, the film, starring Aamir Khan and Kareena Kapoor in the main leads, released in 2126 screens worldwide. It was also the biggest overseas release for a Hindi feature film, with 366 screens in 32 countries.

It said the gross of Rs 93 crore was the highest for the opening weekend in the history of Indian cinema.

Big Pictures said it was delighted with the reception that the film, produced by Vidhu Vinod Chopra, had got across the globe.

"We are stunned and delighted with the collections so far. The word of mouth for the film is something that I don't know I've ever seen in this business before," Kamal Gianchandani, Head India distribution, Reliance Big Pictures, said.

"I think it is the must-see film event of recent memory. This film is going to keep running and running over a long period of time. ‘3 Idiots’ is a game changer in many ways and we are convinced, it will finish its run at the box office with a record breaking set of numbers," he said.

Chopra said the response to the film had been overwhelming everywhere. "Aamir, Raju and I knew from the responses earlier on that people liked the film but this is something else... We have got reports from places like Australia that they have reduced 'Avatar' shows and increased ours," he said.

Based on Chetan Bhagat's novel, "Five Point Someone", 3 Idiots is an entertaining movie about three friends at an engineering college (Aamir, R Madhavan and Sharman Joshi) built around the theme of self-actualisation. Through witty lines and funny situations, the film takes a hard and incisive look at the education system in the country, which lays emphasis on marks and ranks, leaving hardly any time and space for real learning. Much of the film has been shot at the picturesque Indian Institute of Management Bangalore (IIMB) campus.

Others in the cast include Boman Irani, Parikshit Sahni, Omi Vaidya, Javed Jaffrey and Mona Singh.

Other credits include:

Screenplay: Rajkumar Hirani, Abhijat Joshi and Vidhu Vinod Chopra

Music: Shantanu Moitra

Lyrics: Swanand Kirkire

Cinematography: C.R. Muraleedharan

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Himesh Reshammiya-Shenaz Treasurywala starrer Radio had a very slow start of under 15% on limited prints and reports are not so impressive, however the film has been made at a cost of about Rs, 6 crores only so that would be its mitigating factor in its favor.

More To follow Soon ....

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ABCL, the production arm company bearing the name of Amitbh Bachchan in its new form is slowly getting up with a first strike on the box office, with the entry of Abhishek Bachchan as its executing producer and the team of R. Balki (Cheeni Kum) in its first major production venture, Paa. PAA stars the duo of Amitabh Bachchan and Abhishek Bachchan opposite Vidya Balan with Paresh Rawal. And this film is emerging a box office hit in India in commercial terms, much bigger than Cheeni Kum.

The opening on Friday morning however, despite a glitzy premier where nearly all of bollywood showed up including the likes of Shahrukh Khan, Aamir Khan, Hrithik Roshan and Govinda, was actually slow, albeit better than described in some sections of the trade. Single screen theaters like Galaxy in Bombay reported around 16,000 against 27,000 capacity (62%). Some fared lower, few in East UP, South were higher. Overall however an understated opening with people unsure of what to expect.

However by afternoon word had started spreading and erstwhile Bachchan fans who in recent years perhaps had gotten detached from Amitabh Bachchan and Bachchans, started packing into the theaters, and by evening and night, collection shows PAA had shot up by over 100%.


Next up, Saturday saw the pickup continuing, turning phenomenal by the evening. Some theaters in Kandivili in Mumbai were said to have already recorded the best Saturday box office collections of the year when Saturday wasn't even over.

But it is Sunday which could possibly end up being one of the highest box office collection days in this era. With theaters like at Satyam in Madras, a multiplex reporting sold out for rest of the weekend; same with Roxy, a single screener in Mumbai going 100% in advance booking for Sunday. The situation is similar at Central Plaza, another single screen in Mumbai.

Up north a similar upward trend has been witnessed in Delhi and UP. Though the heavy usage of conversational English could keep a segment of the population deterred, the Bachchan factor may be helping compensate for that somewhat, especially in the conventional hindi markets like Kanpur, Allahabad, Gorukhpur etc. Massive pickups have been registered in Bengal, which earlier used to be a very safe Bachchan circuit at one point (ex. suryavansham in 1999 flopped in rest of India, but did hit business in Bengal)

So at this rate, it appears the 15 crore budget PAA, could end up generating over Rs. 20 crores by Sunday evening itself. The film is a certain hit, the only question is how big will the eventual returns be over the next few months, as unlike the recent trend of 72 hour Fri-Sun box office cycle, Paa will have legs over the coming weekdays as well, and then beyond. via : http://www.ibosnetwork.com/newsmanager/templates/template1.aspx?a=21906&z=4

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( radio paa bollywood jpg )

Next Friday will see the release of two diverse genre films. Thursday (at some cinemas and then a regular release on Friday) will see Himesh Reshammiya's Radio DJ/FM film, RADIO, and the next day will see the dynamite father son duo of Amitabh Bachchan and Abhishek Bachchan with a role reversal

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By Joginder Tuteja

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Kurbaan, a film that had- Saif Ali Khan and Kareena Kapoor as the lead pair, Dharma Productions (read Karan Johar) at the helm of production and seasoned ad filmmaker like Rensil D’Silva, as the director could have well been a profit making film. It had all the “essentials” to make a blockbuster. However, forget being a blockbuster, it failed to garner even a decent opening. If trade figures are to be believed, it took an abysmal 20-30 percent opening, with no signs of reviving and this is in spite of good reviews from almost all the critics.

Why didn’t the audience were ‘Kurbaan’ on Kurbaan? What put the audience off Kurbaan was it the content? It can’t be because if the content was bad then it should’ve at least opened well and then nose-dived, which wasn’t the case with this film as even the opening was so weak that one wondered why? Why did the audience didn’t even give this film a fair chance or a fair share of their eyeballs?

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There has always been a general feeling within and outside the industry that controversies and promotional gimmicks always add up to boost box-office collections. There is also a strong feeling that most of the controversies in the film industry are not for real but are rather created by producers for obvious reasons.

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For Hollywood giants Sony/Columbia, this week has been one big disaster week. Two of its production ventures have hit the screens this Friday and, coincidentally, both are disaster films. Columbia’s 2012, which opened on 13th November to earth shattering record breaking collections, is about the beginning of the end of the world in December 2012. Whereas Sony has joined hands with the Bhatt to jointly produce Tum Mile, which, in a way, is a disaster film because it talks about a love story that happens during, the torrential and disastrous rains of 26th July 2005 in Mumbai.

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