By: Rishabh Jain
Alia Bhatt's Gangubai Kathiawadi has done a great job over the second weekend to do good business despite competition from The Batman. Gangubai Kathiawadi is coming closer to Rs 100 crore mark while Amitabh Bachchan's Jhund with Marathi leading lady, Rinku Rajguru released on March 4 faces a slow box office collection over a weekend.
Moviegoers continue to prefer Alia Bhatt's Gangubai Kathiawadi. The film has grossed Rs 92.22 crore through its second weekend. It will reach the ₹100 crore mark just a couple of days into the third week. After Sooryavanshi and 83, it will be the third Bollywood film to reach the ₹100 crore mark following its release during the COVID-19 pandemic. The Hindi remake of Allu Arjun's Pushpa did over Rs 100 crore in box office.
The Batman, directed and co-written by Matt Reeves, has been a long time coming. It's been in the works since 2014, surviving director, casting, and script changes, production shutdowns, the diagnosis of Covid-19, and even death.
The Batman is a dark, stunning, visceral detective thriller with noirish style, visuals, and influences. It's about as much of a superhero film as The Green Mile was a prison film - which isn't much. Its protagonist possesses no special talents other than money, gadgets, and physical combat expertise. The main'supervillain,' a new Riddler (played by Paul Dano), is essentially a serial killer in the spirit of the Zodiac Killer, baffling his pursuers with clues, cyphers, and puzzles.
Jhund, which debuted alongside The Batman, had a poor first weekend box office performance. Over the first weekend, the Amitabh Bachchan starrer grossed Rs 4.75 crore. On Saturday and Sunday, the film saw a slight increase in attendance, but not enough to warrant a significant box office haul. Maharashtra accounted up the majority of the film's revenue. According to the BOI, collections outside of Maharashtra were a "disaster," and despite positive reviews, traffic was low.