The advances for Rohit Shetty’s Cirkus starring Ranveer Singh, Pooja Hegde, Jacqueline Fernandez, and Varun Sharma opened on Sunday and the response has been lukewarm so far. As of Wednesday night, the comedy entertainer has sold around 28,000 tickets across the country, with an overall advance of around Rs. 1 crore mark. Of this, the three national chains, PVR, Inox, and Cinepolis have sold around 14,000 tickets, which is much below the conservative expectation of the industry.
The good news is that brand Rohit Shetty has an appeal among the audience and it always ensures good spot bookings. Even his last few releases had low advance, but the audience on the day of the release turned up in big numbers and helped the film clock good to very good opening day. The three national chains will score an advance similar to Shamshera and Samrat Prithviraj as far as ticket sales are concerned, but the net collections would be higher than the two films due to higher ticket rates.
If the film follows the same trajectory as Shamshera and Prithviraj, the opening will be around Rs. 12 to 14 crores for Cirkus, which though lower than what one expects of a Rohit Shetty and Ranveer Singh film, would still be a fair result laying the platform to grow. The film will benefit from a clear run till the release of Pathaan, and if the film is entertaining for the audience, it will show big gains over the weekend.
Cirkus appeals to the audience in Maharashtra and Gujarat and this audience is often the spot booking audience and not the high in advance. All in all, Cirkus looks set for an interesting weekend.
