‘Raksha Bandhan’ gets worst opening for Akshay Kumar in 2022

According to Bollywood Hungama, Laal Singh Chaddha, which had a budget of a whopping INR1.8 billion, had sold around 30,000 tickets at the three national chains, PVR, Inox and Cinepolis.

“In terms of all India sales, the film, which is an official remake of the hit Hollywood film Forrest Gump, has sold approximately 57,000 tickets for the opening day,” the report shared. “Poor advance booking for Laal Singh Chaddha till now. Reasons could be the poor word of mouth till now, consumers travelling due to the long weekend, or social media backlash,” Abneesh Roy, Executive Director of Edelweiss Securities, said.

The report further added, “For last few weeks, the film was facing social media backlash and boycott calls because of old statements of Aamir Khan, who has also produced the film along with Viacom18 Studios. Roy, however, adds that it is still a bit early to take a final call.” Roy went on to add, “If word of mouth picks up, we could see revival.”

Reports of low advance bookings had been doing rounds since Tuesday itself. On Wednesday, film trade analyst Taran Adarsh tweeted, “Stop painting a rosy picture. Let’s get the facts right. The advance bookings of Laal Singh Chaddha and Raksha Bandhan are way below expectations. Both dependent on spot bookings, walk-in audience, and word of mouth to put up strong totals on day one.”

An exhibitor from Delhi told Hindustan Times, “The occupancy for Laal Singh Chaddha is around 15-20 percent in multiplexes and for Raksha Bandhan, it is even lower, as low as 12 percent in some halls for the first shows. This is very disappointing.” BoxOfficeIndia.com has also reported the same figures.

Khan’s last outing – the Yash Raj Films venture Thugs of Hindostan in 2018, made on a whopping INR3 billion budget and also starring Amitabh Bachchan – earned only half that sum in Indian net collections.

Kumar’s Raksha Bandhan, on the other hand, saw advance booking of 35,000 tickets sold for day 1 at the box office with a total collection of approximately INR6.9 million. The film is produced by Zee Studios and director Aanand L Rai at an approximate budget of over INR700 million.

Kumar has had three flops in Bell Bottom (Aug 19, 2021), Bachchhan Paandey (March 18, 2022) and Samrat Prithviraj (June 3, 2022) over the past year. His only hit during this period has been Sooryavanshi (Nov 5, 2021), which was made on a production budget of about INR1.6 billion and earned a net lifetime collection of INR1.9 billion in India and INR2.95 billion gross worldwide collections, according to the publication.