Hollywood(Again) Beats Desi Releases

Priyanka Chopra’s husband’s film is doing better business than Rani Mukherjee’s hardhitting cop act in Mardaani 2.

Jumanji The Next Level featuring  Nick Jonas is definitely all set to  out-perform  Rani Mukherjee’s franchise  film.Mardaani 2 , in spite of the backing and  distribution prowess of  Yash Raj films,  lags behind  the  tried and  tested  Jumanji.

“Kids love  the Jumanji franchise,whereas the  adult content of Mardaani cuts off a  sizeable  part  of  the audience  for a  big-banner Bollywood cinema,” says a source from a  multiplex chain which claims Yash Raj Films is  making every effort to  push Mardaani 2 above Jumanji  in theatres.

 “But it isn’t working. Jumanji  accrued  Rs 25 crores at  the Indian boxoffice over the  first  weekend,” says  the source.

The figures  for Mardaani 2  were  smaller.

This is good news  for Priyanka Chopra’s husband. Nick Jonas recently had a flop in the failed war epic Mid-way. He  is being loved much more in  Jumanji The Next Level.

With another Hollywood biggie taking centrestage at  the Indian boxoffice  this week, bigwigs of  the  Hindi  film industry are planning to  approach  the  Information & Broadcasting ministry with a  proposal to stop the  dubbing of Hollywood franchise films into Indian languages. 

States trade analyst Girish Johar, “As we all know, slowly but steadily Hollywood is making inroads and infact from a 2-5% share it now engulfs around 20% share in Indian BOX Office. Jumanji is the typical Hollywood popcorn flick which caters to the youth and is a hardcore entertainer. The studio has dubbed the film in the 3 major Indian languages and have done a good release by giving it a good marketing push. The Jumanji  franchise has yet again ensured that it gives a good and  and ahead start vis a vis hindi releases. This is now here to stay.”

However  Girish Johar feels the target audience for the two films  are different. “Though the target audience  for  Jumanji and  Mardaani 2 are different but  Jumanji  does capture some of the Mardaani  audiences initially. Since Mardaani 2 is getting very good reviews and strong feedback the initial loss of audiences will not matter in the long run. But had the film got weak in competition then surely Jumanji would have lead the boxoffice by a huge margin.”