Akshay’s Bellbottom garners ₹12.65 crore on first four days of release

Bollywood’s first theatre release since second COVID wave, Akshay Kumar-starrer BellBottom, has garnered ₹12.65 crore over the last four days, mostly because of an extended weekend. Sunday’s collection was the best at ₹4.30 crore approximately.

This is a significant gain, given the fact that the film struggled to go past the ₹3 crore mark in its first two days of release.

In fact, the Sunday collection was the best with a 35% rise on a single day, mainly because of Raksha Bandhan.

The spy thriller released on August 19 (Thursday) and collected Rs 2.75 crore on the opening day. The next day (Friday) it made ₹2.75 crore more and ₹3.25 crore on Saturday.

Trade analyst Girish Johar told The Indian Express that in pre-COVID times the film would have collected Rs 20 crore on day 1 itself. “As industry insiders, we are not looking at it from the perspective of box office numbers, but it will help the industry’s revival. With the release of BellBottom, the wheels of the industry will start moving,” Johar said.

The film has to struggle because theatres and multiplexes are still closed in all cities of Maharashtra and other big cities elsewhere. But it still did well by going past Rajkummar Rao-starrer horror-comedy Roohi, which released in March, as film with the biggest opening weekend collection this year. Overall, Roohi garnered ₹12.58 crore.

Also read: Akshay’s Bell Bottom wins rave reviews, but these Gulf countries have banned it

Akshay Kumar told SpotboyE that in the present circumstances, if the film manages to collect even ₹30 crores, ‘it is equivalent to ₹100 crore.’ “If the movie does ₹50 crore then it equals ₹150 crore (under pre-pandemic circumstances). So that’s where it stands,” the superstar said.

Bellbottom is directed by Ranjit M Tewari and written by Aseem Arrora and Parveez Sheikh. It is based on hijackings of Indian planes in the 1980s. Besides Akshay Kumar, the film has Vaani Kapoor, Huma Qureshi, Lara Dutta, Adil Hussain, Zain Khan Durrani, Denzil Smith, Dolly Ahluwalia, Sunit Tandon in important roles.

BellBottom has received good reviews so far. The Indian Express gave it 3 stars while The Hindustan Times called the film an ‘edge-of-the-seat thriller’.