Ram Setu isn't setting the box office on fire as of now, despite the festive season of Diwali. As of Monday morning, Ram Setu has sold around 38,000 tickets across the country for the opening day with an India advance booking gross of about Rs. 1 cr. In NETT terms, the opening day advance for the Akshay Kumar starrer is under Rs. 1 crore as of Monday early morning, and with just a day to go, the final advance of the film in best case scenario will be around Rs. 2 crore mark.
The advances so far are below par across the nation, be it single screens or multiplexes. Of the total ticket sales, the three national chains - PVR, Inox, and Cinepolis - have sold around 16,000 tickets for the opening day, which means that the film is trailing behind even the underperformers like Samrat Prithviraj, Shamshera, and Laal Singh Chaddha at this point of time, though it is expected to gain some better momentum on Monday.
Being a post-Diwali release, the spot bookings will be at an all-time high for a feature film, as the audience is habituated to watching films on this day every year. There will be a section of the audience who will just walk into the cinema halls without knowing what the releases are and decide basis what the ticket seller says, and this section of the audience too will account for the walk-in audience as this is the biggest day for film business in India.
The hype for a Diwali release is definitely missing and hence, its important for Ram Setu to deliver on the content front. If the content doesn't strike a chord with the audience, the road ahead to sustain will be difficult. Despite the low advances, the hope is on the audience to put the film in a respectable spot and take the opening day number above Bhool Bhulaiyaa 2 to emerge as the second biggest opener of the year for an original Hindi film after Brahmastra. This will be a low result, but yet a victory of sorts given the response to advance booking at this point of time.
A Rs. 18 crore start would have meant a fair result but now it is all about seeing how far can the film reach on the day of release on the strength of spot booking and walk-in audience.
