‘Jungle Book’ goes wild on Pakistani box office

Shah Rukh’s ‘Fan’ continues to impress, nears Rs100m mark

KARACHI: Shah Rukh Khan’s Fan may not have been able to work its magic on Indian audiences but it seems that the Bollywood superstar’s charm still hasn’t worn off of Pakistani audiences. Nearly ten days after its release, the movie has managed to earn approximately Rs 95 million at the Pakistani box office.

Corroborating the numbers to The Express Tribune, a representative of Geo Films revealed how the film had managed to do well both in multiplexes and single screen cinemas. But Fan is not the only film that has wowed local audiences as Disney’s live action The Jungle Book has had a stellar opening weekend as well. The Jon Faverau-directorial has managed to gross approximately Rs35 million during its opening weekend.

Unlike Fan which was released across 81 screens, Jungle Book had a relatively smaller release on 65 screens. Marketing and distribution manager of IMGC entertainment, Ahsan Khalil said that a major reason for Jungle Book doing so impressively was because the film was released in 3-D. “Unsurprisingly Jungle Book has done very well in Punjab as there are more cinema screens on the circuit over there. But the figures in Karachi were excellent as well,” shared Khalil. Considering that there was no major international or local movie releasing during the coming weekend, Khalil was optimistic that Jungle Book would cross the Rs 100 million-mark at the local box office. “The next major release is Captain America: Civil War and given how well the movie has already done during the opening weekend, should it continue in the same vein, its lifetime gross could be well over Rs 100 million.”

Based on Rudyard Kipling masterpiece, the Jungle Book movie is a live action adaption of the popular novel and features voice performances by notable actors such as Bill Murray, Ben Kingsley, Idris Elba, Lupita Nyong’o, Scarlett Johansson and Christopher Walken. It has managed to gross $528.5 million at the international box office.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 26^th,  2016.

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