Box office: Housefull 4 makes a good opening, Made In China and Saand Ki Aankh struggle

Akshay Kumar, Riteish Deshmukh and Bobby Deol's Housefull 4 has made a good beginning at the box office. Despite negative reviews, the juvenile, family-unfriendly comedy opened with a collection of Rs18.50 crore nett yesterday, as per figures shared by BoxOfficeIndia.com.

While the opening isn’t as good as one would expect from a big-budget franchise, that can be attributed to the pre-Diwali period. Collections are expected to make a jump on Monday.  

Still, the opening is the highest of the Housefull franchise. The previous three films in the series had opened with Rs9.32 crore (2010), Rs12.19 crore (2012) and Rs15.24 crore (2016), respectively.

According to trade sources, the film has been made on a budget of Rs160-170 crore, so it will need to keep the momentum high in the coming week despite the negative reviews and poor word-of-mouth publicity.

The other two Diwali releases, Rajkummar Rao's Made In China and Taapsee Pannu and Bhumi Pednekar's Saand Ki Aankh, opened to low numbers. The former made just Rs1 crore nett while the latter fared worse, collecting just Rs50 lakh.

Both films have been made at an estimated cost of Rs30 crore each. So they will need to see a great deal of improvement in collections over the next few days, especially on Monday, if they are to reach a respectable figure. Saand Ki Aankh has received better reviews and word-of-mouth publicity than Made In China.