Trade Espresso: Aisa queue?

There was no major movie release last Friday. The year's first week is considered an inauspicious time to release a film. The only release of the week, a B-grader called Manthan, was hardly advertised.

No one knew from where it had come from and why. Not surprisingly, it tanked big time. The lack of competition wasn't enough to boost the second week's collections of Raju Khan's Showbiz and Anurag Kashyap's Hanuman Returns, both of which have fared miserably.

Good luck, bad luck
Hanuman, the first movie in the animated film franchise, had done well. Holiday audiences were expected to line up for its spin-off. No such luck.

The collections at the multiplexes were quite abysmal. The question now is - will Percept Pictures (which produced both the Hanuman films) follow up with another installment? They're sounding gung ho about it. Good luck!

Showbiz was released without a millimeter of hype. Several shows were cancelled in Mumbai due to poor audience turn-out. The lack of competition this week and last week's failures appear to have helped sustain the collections of Anees Bazmee's Welcome and Aamir Khan's Taare Zameen Par.

Next attraction
Although Welcome witnessed a drop in the collections after the initial rush, Taare Zameen Par has been doing steady business, especially at the multiplexes. Welcome is faring extremely well in small towns.

Now, it's over to Rajkumar Santoshi's Halla Bol featuring Ajay Devgan, Vidya Balan and Pankaj Kapoor, and E Niwas' My Name is Anthony Gonsalves with debutant Nikhil Dwivedi, Amrita Rao and Mithun Chakraborty.