Hits Back With ‘Mardaani’ - Rani Mukerji |Box Office

As mentioned in this column last week, the fate of ‘Mardaani’ depended on how it performed over the weekdays. The reviews were decent, word of mouth good and the subject just right, all it mattered was for this fact to be registered well with a large segment of audience. Fortunately for the film, the target audience continued to be interested right into the weekdays as well, as a result of which this Pradeep Sarkar affair hung on quite well right through the weekdays. There was minimal fall from the weekend, as a result of which the film managed to score the first week of around 23 crore.

Now these are decent collections for an ‘Adults Only’ film with a female central protagonist and a very serious subject. For Rani Mukerji, this is a good shot in the arm when it comes to a film revolving around her since ‘Aiiyaa’ was a huge disaster. However, the kind of credibility and respect she has gained after ‘Mardaani’ would indeed do wonders for her from this point on. Even for Pradeep Sarkar, the film is now his highest grosser till date and with 30 crore set to come in, one waits to see how far does ‘Mardaani’ go from here. The tax free status that the Yash Raj offering has started gaining in a few states would help too.

Rani Mukerji in a still from movie 'Mardaani'

Rani Mukerji in a still from movie ‘Mardaani’

What is all the more commendable is the fact that despite competition in the form of ‘Singham Returns’, ‘Mardaani’ just about managed to edge past by even though the Ajay Devgn starrer had a slightly better weekend. Though it was widely speculated that the Rohit Shetty film would pose a huge challenge to ‘Mardaani’ even in its second week, that was not really the case to be.

Another release of the week, ‘Mad About Dance’, wasn’t even reviewed by quite a few publications/websites and went unnoticed critically as well as commercially.