Despite a top-heavy star cast, the backing of two A-list banners (Dharma Productions and Nadiadwala Grandson Entertainment) and a release date aimed at exploiting a long weekend, Kalank has been underwhelming at the box office. Abhishek Varman’s Partition-era drama, starring Varun Dhawan, Alia Bhatt, Aditya Roy Kapur, Sonakshi Sinha, Madhuri Dixit and Sanjay Dutt, was the solo Hindi release on April 17 (a Wednesday) to give it an uninterrupted run all the way until Avengers: Endgame rolled into town on April 26. After a strong opening on Wednesday (an estimated Rs 21 crore), the movie earned Rs 62.5 crore by the end of Sunday, well under the roughly Rs 100-crore trade estimate. Collections on Saturday and Sunday were around Rs 20 crore, according to trade sources.
The Hollywood release on April 18, The Curse of the Weeping Woman, earned an estimated Rs 4.90 crore in its first week. That’s a little less than the second week collections of Vivek Agnihotri’s The Tashkent Files (Rs 5.5 crore).
Also posting an underwhelming total was Romeo Akbar Walter. Robbie Grewal’s espionage-themed movie, starring John Abraham as an undercover Indian agent in Pakistan before the 1971 Indo-Pak war, earned an estimated Rs 39 crore in its third week.
Anurag Singh’s Kesari, starring Akshay Kumar as the leader of the 21 Sikhs who waged a heroic last stand against thousands of Afghanis in Saragarhi in 1897, has reached a little over Rs 150 crore in its fifth week. The movie was released on March 21.
Sujoy Ghosh’s suspense thriller Badla, starring Taapsee Pannu and Amitabh Bachchan, added a few more zeroes to its box office haul in its seventh week, posting an estimated box office of Rs 87.85 crore.
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