‘Padmaavat’ is top Bollywood opener in North America
VIACOM’S controversial epic defied violent protests and mixed reviews in India in its opening weekend while beating previous top Bollywood opener ‘PK’ in North America.
Controversial Bollywood epic ‘Padmaavat’ defied violent protests and mixed reviews in India, recording a healthy opening at the box office both at home and abroad.
Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s film became the top Hindi-language Bollywood opener in North America, grossing US$4.4 million over the weekend in 326 cinemas (while its cumulative figure with paid previews touched US$4.93 million), according to Viacom18 Motion Pictures, the Indian film unit of Viacom that co-produced the film.
‘Padmaavat’ landed in the 11th spot in the US box-office ranking for the Jan 26-28 weekend, breaking the record for the largest Bollywood opening weekend in North America, previously held by Aamir Khan starrer ‘PK’, which had opened with US$3.6 million in 2014.
However, the record for the highest opening by any Indian film in North America is still held by last year’s Telugu-language South Indian blockbuster ‘Baahubali 2’, which collected US$10.4 million from 425 theatres during its opening weekend. The film was also dubbed into Tamil and Hindi.
While figures from some international territories are still to come, overseas ‘Padmaavat’ grossed US$12.1 million (including North America), with Viacom’s Paramount Pictures handling the film’s release in the UK/Ireland, Australia, New Zealand and the Middle East, though not the US and Canada, where the film has been distributed by Viva Pictures. This is the first time Paramount is distributing a Bollywood title. ‘Padmaavat’ had a particularly good run in Australia, where it collected US$1.4 million (A$1.7 million) over the weekend, while in the U.K. it reached US$1.2 million (856,129 pounds).
In India, ‘Padmaavat’ crossed the 1 billion rupee mark, the local standard for a blockbuster, collecting a gross of US$27.6 million (1.76 billion rupees) over the weekend on 4,000 screens, according to Viacom18. (The net figure for India, after deducting taxes, comes to $17.9 million, or 1.14 billion rupees, which is the figure Indian analysts focus on.)
India does not officially report box-office figures, so it is difficult to ascertain which film is the alltime opening weekend champ, but the billion-plus rupee haul puts ‘Padmaavat’ in the same league as last year’s hit ‘Dangal’, which is understood to have opened to US$16.3 million in India.
Taking the international and Indian gross figures together, ‘Padmaavat’s total openingweekend haul has reached US$39.78 million, beating the US$34.0 million worldwide take of ‘Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle’, which was in the second spot of comScore’s global film rankings for the weekend. Since comScore has not included the India figures for ‘Padmaavat’ – and those from some other territories – the film ranked 16th on its weekend list with US$9.2 million.
‘Padmaavat’ revolves around Queen Rani Padmavati (Deepika Padukone, who made her Hollywood debut in Vin Diesel’s xXx: The Return of Xander Cage and her warrior king husband, Maharawal Ratan Singh (Shahid Kapoor), of the Rajput kingdom of Mewar in Rajasthan, who battled Muslim invader Alauddin Khilji (Ranveer Singh). According to legend, Khilji was besotted by the beauty of the queen, sparking his fixation to conquer her kingdom.
The film ignited protests when it began shooting in 2016, when its sets were ransacked by fringe members of the Rajput community, who even physically attacked Bhansali. The protests were fuelled by suggestions that the film was distorting history and apparently suggested a romance between the Hindu queen and the Muslim invader via a fantasy dream sequence, a charge that has been denied by Bhansali.
After the film’s original release date of Dec. 1 was postponed, it was cleared by India’s censor board, subject to some modifications, such as replacing the film’s original title, ‘Padmavati’, with the new title referring to the epic poem Padmavat, written in 1540 by Sufi poet Malik Muhammad Jayasi, that tells a fictional story about Khilji’s desire for Queen Padmavati.
The censor board also asked for the film’s disclaimer to state that it “does not claim historical accuracy.”