Indian spy thriller Pathaan, starring Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan, has enjoyed a bumper first weekend at the box office, coming in at no. 2 behind Avatar: The Way of Water.
Directed by Siddharth Anand, the actioner is the fourth instalment in the YRF Spy Universe. Khan plays the titular character, a spy brought out of retirement to take down an international terrorist organisation.
Mindblowing Films opened Pathaan on 130 screens to see it collect $2.2 million ($2.7 million in previews). On average, that comes to a whopping $17,033 per screen.
In India, the film broke opening day records for a Hindi language film.
Village Cinemas national programming manager Geoff Chard tells IF the title exceeded all its expectations, and believes it on track to become the highest grossing Hindi-language film released in Australia (noting that there have been some other strong multi-language performers).
“It’s held impressively from the opening day too, with no major drops day-to-day,” he says.
The next best performing new release of last weekend was cross-cultural rom-com What’s Love Got to Do with It? , directed by Shekhar Kapur and written by Jennifer Khan.
Set between London and Lahore, it stars Lily James as a filmmaker who documents her childhood friend and neighbour’s (Shazad Latif) arranged marriage to a bride from Pakistan. Shabana Azmi and Emma Thompson also star.
Distributed by Studiocanal, the film bowed to $884,517 from 320 screens, or $1.1 million with previews, to come in at no. 4. Chard notes the film has tended to skew older and slightly upmarket.
For Majestic Cinemas, which operates across regional NSW and Queensland, it was the third highest grossing film of the weekend behind The Way of Water and Puss in Boots: The Last Wish.
“There is certainly a latent market for more romcoms and we are looking forward to more in the future,” CEO Kieren Dell tells IF.
Alex Temesvari, GM of Sydney’s Hayden Orpheum Picture Palace, says its opening was better than anticipated. “Hopefully the positive word of mouth will keep it going,” he says.
Universal opened Todd Field’s TÁR, which just scored six Oscar nominations, including for lead Cate Blanchett, on 90 screens to a healthy $459,593, or $5,107 per screen.
The highest grossing site in Australia for the film so far is the Orpheum, with Temesvari telling IF its performance was thanks in part to the “massively successful” Cate Blanchett Q&A preview events it held last November.
While noting the film skews “very upmarket”, Chard says: “Hopefully the Oscar buzz around both the film and Cate Blanchett will sustain a solid season.”
While TÁR may have benefitted from Oscar hype in its opening weekend, the only other in-release titles that seemed to get a boost from their nominations were Banshees of Inisherin (up 4 per cent) and Triangle of Sadness (up 31 per cent). While The Way of Water is nominated for Best Film, it is largely assumed its performance is driven by continued blockbuster power rather than awards prestige.
“We didn’t yet see much of an Oscars bump yet; most of the continuing Oscars’ titles maintained similar drops to the prior week (with the increase for the Australia Day public holiday notwithstanding). We should expect to see the momentum build for the Oscars in the lead-up to the ceremony in March, and in particular the days following,” Chard says.
Overall the top 20 titles made $13.7 million, up 3 per cent on the previous weekend.
Avatar: The Way of Water is now at $86.2 million in Australia after seven weekends after earning an extra $3.3 million for Disney.
That means the James Cameron sequel has now surpassed Avengers: Endgame to become the fourth highest grossing film of all time in Australia, behind the original Avatar ($115.8 million), Star Wars: The Force Awakens ($94 million) and Top Gun: Maverick ($93.2 million).
Globally, The Way of Water has grossed $US2.1 billion, making it the fourth highest grossing film ever released (with two of the others, the original Avatar and Titanic also directed by Cameron).
Universal’s Puss in Boots: The Last Wish remains the school holiday favourite, adding an extra $1.5 million in its fifth weekend to move to $18.5 million, while stablemate M3GAN is on $5.4 million after three weekends, earning $767,058.
Paramount’s Babylon didn’t seem to get an Oscars bump, dropping 41 per cent in its sophomore frame to $760,663, moving to $2.7 million.
Guy Ritchie title Operation Fortune: Ruse de guerre, now three weekends in, has a cume of $5.1 million after netting an additional $749,485.
CMC’s Chinese sci-fi The Wandering Earth II, which opened on Sunday January 22, stands at $1.1 million after earning $596,268 over the weekend from just 38 screens – a screen average of a massive $15,691.
“A measly 15 per cent drop from the opening day shows there is plenty of interest still left in this title,” Chard says.
“The small drop was helped by the fact that the New Year titles tend to start a bit slower and can pick up steam towards the end of the holiday period.”
Robert Connolly’s Blueback remains in the top 20, now sitting just shy of $2 million for Roadshow after five weekends.
Emily, also produced by Connolly’s Arenamedia and directed by Frances O’Connor, is on $427,423 after three weekends for Madman.