Box office: The Last Jedi has an average opening, Monsoon Shootout does poorly

Over the years, big-budget Hollywood films have done well in India, but the Indian audience has not really taken to the Star Wars franchise. The latest film in the series, Star Wars: The Last Jedi, has had an average opening, bagging just Rs2 crore nett on Friday, as reported by BoxOfficeIndia.com. 

Film exhibitor Akshaye Rathi, however, doesn’t think the opening is poor. “The Star Wars franchise has always had a very niche audience," he said. "It doesn’t have a following like the Marvel franchise.”  

Star Wars: The Last Jedi is said to have been released across 800 screens in India. “If you look at the volume of screens it got, the Rs2-2.15 crore nett is not such a bad figure," Rathi said. "The film has got largely great reviews, and so I expect the numbers to grow on Saturday and Sunday.”

The Last Jedi has done better than the last Star Wars film Rogue One (2016) which managed a little below Rs1 crore nett on opening day.

There were a host of Hindi films released this week, but the only notable film was the long-delayed Monsoon Shootout which has Nawazuddin Siddiqui in the lead. The film managed a poor Rs25 lakh nett on opening day.  Monsoon Shootout, however, was released on just 250 screens across India. The film was first shown at the Cannes festival in 2013. 

Meanwhile, the preceding week’s Fukrey Returns continued to grow, bagging Rs3.25 crore on its second Friday. Made at an estimated budget of Rs30 crore and released on more than 1,200 screens across India, Fukrey Returns has so far bagged Rs52.75 crore nett and is well on its way to becoming a hit.