Roy steals the show at Pakistani box office

Film outpaces ‘PK’ on opening day but business expected to dwindle due to negative word-of-mouth.

KARACHI:

The ongoing ICC Cricket World Cup seemed to have no impact whatsoever on the Bollywood film Roy, as the film enjoyed a successful opening in Pakistani cinemas.

According to an official of distribution company Eveready Entertainment, “The movie had a successful opening at the box office on Friday and even beat PK’s opening-day collection by earning around Rs1.25 crore on its first day of screening.” The Aamir Khan-starrer PK had an opening of Rs1.05 crore in December last year.

There was a whirl surrounding the business of the film, as its box-office collections were expected to suffer with the movie being released during the opening weekend of the World Cup.



Abid Ali Zaidi, assistant marketing manager at Cinepax Cinemas, said that Roy had a ‘tremendous’ opening two days at the cinema and revealed, “More than 3,000 people showed up at the screening of the movie at Cinepax Ocean Mall alone on Saturday and Sunday.”

On the other hand, cinema owner Nadeem Mandviwalla revealed, “The box-office collections for the film were excellent over the weekend, but the reports about the film were not very good.”

The film distributor and managing director of Mandviwalla Entertainment holds that there were various factors, which contributed to the brilliant opening. “Firstly, it is a Ranbir Kapoor-starrer film and, secondly, some of the songs from the film had become hits with the audience prior to the film’s release,” noted Mandviwalla.

He added that word-of-mouth may affect the film, “Although I have not seen Roy, I feel that positive and negative word-of-mouth always affects the commercial performance of a film.”

Despite this, Madviwalla believed that the performance of the film in the current week will diclose more about whether it is a success or not.

Directed by Vikramjit Singh, Roy is a romantic-thriller film, which revolves around the life of filmmakers Kabir Grewal (Arjuan Rampal) and Ayesha Aamir (Jacqueline Fernandez) and a mysterious con-artist named Roy (Ranbir Kapoor), who gets drawn into their lives. The movie also stars Anupam Kher, Shibhani Dandekar and Rajit Kapur in supporting roles.

Na Maloom Afraad crosses Rs13 crore

The Na Maloom Afraad juggernaut seems unstoppable, as after 19 weeks at the box office, the film continues to rake in substantial collections and has also crossed the Rs13-crore mark.

The movie, which was distributed by Eveready Entertainment, was released on the Eidul Azha weekend on October 6 last year. During its opening weekend, the film faced stiff competition from other releases such as the Pakistani spy-thriller Operation 021 and the Hrithik Roshan- and Katrina Kaif-starrer Bang Bang.

Four months since its release, the movie is still being screened in several cinemas. The crime-comedy film, which opened on 66 screens, is currently being shown on seven screens across the country.

Directed by Nabeel Qureshi, the movie stars veteran actors Javed Sheikh, Salman Shahid and also marks the feature-film debut of television actors, such as Fahad Mustafa, Urwa Hocane, Mohsin Abbas Haider and Mehwish Hayat.

The story of the movie is based on the current turmoil in the city of Karachi and how three men, who are down on their luck, try to use this as an opportunity to change their fortunes. Na Maloom Afraad was well-received by critics, with its direction, acting, songs and comic one-liners garnering praise.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 17^th,  2015.

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