Anees Bazmee directorial, Bhool Bhulaiyaa 2 starring Kartik Aaryan and Kiara Advani is set to bring the box office back to life. According to advance booking trends, the horror comedy has sold around 45,000 tickets in advance until Thursday morning at the three key national chains, PVR, Inox, and Cinepolis.
While Inox is leading from the front in terms of ticket sales with around 22,000 tickets, PVR follows with 18,000, and finally, Cinepolis with about 12,000 tickets. The movie is expected to close with an advance sale of about 1lakh tickets in the three chains alone, which amount to a gross total of Rs. 2.60 crores, taking an average ticket price of Rs 260 in the multiplexes. If one has to compare this with RRR across these three national multiplex chains, then Bhool Bhulaiyaa 2 has sold more tickets than RRR when compared to the same time period.
Bhool Bhulaiyaa 2 is a mass film and hence, it will be riding a lot on the spot bookings too with single-screen audience turning out on the day. The advances so far (with a day left for release) are better than all the pandemic Bollywood releases, including some of the bigger star films like 83, Bachchan Paandey, Runway 34, Jayeshbhai Jordaar. These trends have given healthy signals that there is an interest among the audience to watch the film and this has also indicated a double-digit opening for this horror-comedy. There will be good spot bookings on Friday, and if the talk in the audience is positive, it will pack a solid punch over the opening weekend by showing an upward journey.
The movie has a shot of emerging as the biggest opener to date for Kartik Aaryan by clocking the Rs. 12 crore mark on day one, though a lot would depend on the walk-in audience. These are excellent figures for a film led by Kartik and Kiara, but one also needs to credit the power of the Bhool Bhulaiyaa brand as also the fact that Anees Bazmee brand of cinema also has a loyal audience base.
