Ranbir Kapoor returns to the big screen after 4 years with Shamshera. The Karan Malhotra directorial pairs him alongside Sanjay Dutt and Vaani Kapoor. Limited advances for the film opened on Saturday and there has been movement in the ticket sales from Sunday. The producers, YRF, have gone ahead with a sensible pricing for Shamshera, to bring it closer to the masses. As of Monday morning, Shamshera has sold around 5500 tickets in the three national chains, PVR, Inox and Cinepolis.
If we take the weekend into account, the advance sales at the three chains is around 10,000 tickets. Shamshera is an out and out mass film, and hence, the walk in will be pretty strong. To cite an example, the advance of Samrat Prithviraj suggested a single digit start, but the opening went north of 10.50 crore due to strong walk in audience. As of Monday morning, Samrat Prithviraj had sold 2,000 tickets in PVR, and Shamshera stands 30 percent higher with 2600 tickets. If the film follows the same trend until the day of release, the opening too can be at-least 30 percent higher around 15 crore range. The trailer and music has been received better, and hence, it wouldn't be surprising if the advances pick up a better pace in the days to come. Films like Jug Jugg Jeeyo and Bhool Bhulaiyaa 2 are more heavy on advance as compared to Shamshera, which is a walk in heavy film. Multiplex films often clock better advances whereas commercial entertainers bank big on walk ins. So the right comparison point for Shamshera will be the commercial flicks like Prithviraj, Bachchan Pandey, which took some sort of initial back in the day, as compared to other commercail films which failed to leave a mark.
Commercial films are conventionally dependent on walk-in audiences, and that will happen for Shamshera too. Ranbir Kapoor is easily the biggest Hindi film star since the debut of Hrithik Roshan (2000), and there will be a section of audience who will also step out to see RK in this space. The single screens too should have good walk-ins through the day, as Shamshera tick marks all the boxes of an out and out commercial film, and the presence of Sanjay Dutt too will help the film.
Reports too will come into play from Friday, as we have seen films perform basis the reports from the evening shows itself. In pre-pandemic, the word of mouth reflected Saturday, but with the fast modes of communication, today a film's fate is decided even before the Friday evening shows. A positive talk means a big boost from Friday evening helping the film pose a bigger figure than what morning and noon shows indicated. And a negative talk means more or less flat trend on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. The opening will be dependent on the audience reports too, and it can be anywhere in the vicinity of 14 to 20 crore, though as mentioned before, we anticipate it to be somewhere around 17 crore. It's Friday that will tell us if the prediction is right or wrong.
There will be multiple reports and conjectures about advances not being upto the mark, but mass films have always been about walk in audience. These are early days and its very important for Shamshera to build momentum till its release, and continue with its on the day. We will be reporting the advance status of Shamshera on a daily basis, so stay tuned for real time updates on this action saga.