Aamir Khan’s highly anticipated return has stirred a fervent excitement in the industry with the opening of ticket sales for Laal Singh Chaddha on Friday. Despite the grand hype, the response so far has been only average, as the film has managed to acquire approximately 30,000 tickets across India and amass a total collection of Rs. 75 lakhs as of now.
With just 48 hours to go, it is expected that Laal Singh Chaddha will rake in a whopping Rs. 5 crore advance across India on the first day alone. Over the weekend, advance booking numbers are expected to hit Rs. 8 crores. This will make Laal Singh Chaddha the second best film in terms of advance booking since the start of the pandemic, second only to the film ‘83. Similarly, walk–in film will not be that high, however, it will still start much better than ‘83 due to Aamir Khan’s stardom in multiplexes in the Hindi film industry.
Out of the total 30,000 tickets, the three national chains have managed to sell around 17,000 tickets while the non-national chains sold the remaining 13,000 tickets. The pre–booking trend outside of the national chains is relatively sluggish and the success of Laal Singh Chaddha will be highly reliant on the holidays to bring in additional spot bookings. The movie has fared the best in cities such as Chennai, Hyderabad, Bangalore, Delhi, Punjab, and Kolkata, giving it a decisive advantage over Raksha Bandhan in these areas. The pre-release performance of the movie in these cities could give Laal Singh Chaddha the edge it needs to surpass Raksha Bandhan’s sales on its release day.
Laal Singh Chaddha should be targeting a first day collection in the range of Rs. 15 crores and then grow from strength to strength in the extended week full of holidays due to positive word of mouth.
