Marvel seems to have sprinkled its magic on the Indian Box Office, finally. Friday saw the release of Marvel’s much-awaited Asian superhero movie “Shang-Chi and The Legend of The Ten Rings” and fans couldn’t have been more excited. It is the first Marvel movie to release in India after Spider-Man: Far From Home, 2 years ago. Even though the U.S. saw a Black Widow’s theatrical release, India missed out on that but looks like Shang-Chi is all set to make up for that loss too.
Shang-Chi has been off to a phenomenal start. It has earned a whopping Rs 3.25 crores at the Box Office on Day 1. This is by far the best earning for a movie post-pandemic, especially for a Hollywood movie, and has even beaten Akshay Kumar’s Bell Bottom, which opened to Rs 2.25 crores collection at the Box Office. This was pretty much expected from a Marvel movie and exhibitors and theatre owners had even higher hopes for the movie. The movie for the matter had a great advance booking record and looking at that, Shang-Chi was estimated to at least be around Rs. 5 crores on the opening day.
But then again, everything at this point is unpredictable. Everyone’s just happy that an opening day collection is this good post-pandemic. It is even more phenomenal because the movie has been released in lesser theatres than Bell Bottom. Shang-Chi is currently screening on around 900 screens across the country. The best business for the movie was seen from the Andra/Nizam region and Delhi NCR-UP region. The Hindi movie belt was the biggest contributor to the movie, along with collections from Andhra and Nizam regions.
The English version of the movie is doing extremely well, followed by the Hindi version. The other regional languages aren’t seeing that great of a business, the reason being Non-Hindi speaking belts might have opted for the English version. A surprise came in from Bangalore, as with most theatres open and screening Shang-chi and the working population finally coming back, it still didn’t record a good business. Shang-chi, though has seen a great Day 1 collection, is expected to see a dip soon and these dips in the collection right now, post-pandemic have become utterly unpredictable.
Along with Marvel’s Shang-Chi and The Legend of the Ten Rings, Vin Diesel’s “F9” has also been released on screens a day before, which is on 2nd February. The movie on Day 1 has collected somewhere around Rs. 2 crores and is already seeing a dip on Day 2. Trade analysts have mentioned that not much can be expected from F9 since it has been released in India after almost three months of its original U.S. release. By now, most fans might have already watched it through various means.
As far as Bell Bottom is concerned, the business is picking up again in the 3rd week and this will be interesting to see Shang-Chi is able to maintain itself in India, along with Bell Bottom. Analysts have mentioned that the momentum right now is perfect at the box office and if more and more rock-solid movies like Shang-Chi and Bell Bottom are to release, the box office will see a great revival pretty quickly.