Katrina Kaif and Raajneeti rock the box office

Prakash Jha’s Raajneeti hit the jackpot at the box office. The multi-starrer political thriller had a great opening weekend in the theatres both in India and overseas. The movie was released in fewer screens compared to Housefull and Kites.

Hrithik Roshan and Barbara Mori starrer Kites was released in more than 200 theatres while Raajneeti was on 124 theatres.

The movie set a record of second biggest opening after 3 Idiots which released last year. However, a major contributor behind 3 Idiots’ success was that the movie was released during Christmas and Monday was a holiday.

Rediff.com reported that Raajneeti collected Rs.105 million on the first day and somewhere between Rs.330-350 million in the opening weekend. The production cost of the movie was Rs.550 million. The movie will have a great collection during its theatrical run as there are no other major movie releases next weekend. This means the movie will have fourteen days of theatrical run.

Raajneeti also received good response in other urban centers and in North America with occupancies higher than 80%.

Normally, Hindi movies based on politics do not do very well in the U.S. but Raajneeti changed all that. According to distributor UTV, The movie had a great opening weekend in the U.S collecting $9,17,000 in three days. The movie also had the “highest per screen average”-$7395. However, distributor is afraid that the movie would not add significant number of audience in the US.

Raajneeti took the number 11 spot on the box office charts. Shrek Forever After was at the top place collecting more than $25 million.

Kites opened at number 10 position in the US box office three weeks ago and collected about $2 million in the U.S. UTV hopes that Raajneeti would do better than Kites in the upcoming weeks.

Raajneeti is Prakash Jha’s first successful movie in North America. His last movie, Apaharan, was released in 2005. Throughout his career, the director earned name and fame for making serious political movies such as Damul (1984)

Parinati (1988), Mrityudand (1997), Gangaajal (2003).

Raajneeti also stars Katrina Kaif, the top actress of Bollywood. In the movie, she plays the role of a female politician. Her involvement in the movie led many people to believe that Prakash Jha is going to make a movie on the Gandhi-Nehru family. Repeatedly, Prakash Jha denied that claim. He said that the story of the movie is based on a part of Mahabharata, the great epic. Few American movie critics also opined that the movie has some resemblances with Francis Ford Coppola’s movie, Godfather.