Third film in 2014 to achieve feat.
By Tathagata Mitra
BANGALORE: Akshay Kumar finally has a hit after a long time: ‘Holiday: A Soldier is Never Off Duty’ has landed in the esteemed 100 crores club after the second week of its release.
The actor’s last film to achieve this mark was Rowdy Rathore way back in 2012, which coincidentally also starred Sonakshi Sinha. Maybe it is just luck or maybe the crowd love seeing the two together but pairing up with Sonakshi is sure proving to be a good sign for the Khiladi of Bollywood.
Holiday: A Soldier is Never Off Duty is the third film in 2014 to cross the 100 crores barrier. The first film to do so was Salman Khan’s Jai Ho, which in terms of a Salman Khan movie got quite a lukewarm response. Salman’s Eid release, Kick is hoping to break Dhoom: 3’s record of Rs. 533 crores worldwide to become the highest grossing Bollywood film of all time, unadjusted for inflation. The second film in 2014 to cross the 100 crore mark was Arjun Kapoor and Alia Bhatt starrer 2 states, based on a novel of the same name written by Chetan Bhagat. Although it did cross the line, it hardly got any further.
Holiday: A Soldier is Never Off Duty marks the second Bollywood venture of Tamil director A.R. Murugadoss. His previous film Ghajini, (also a remake of his own Tamil film just like Holiday) had also grossed more than 100 crores at the box office and held the record as the highest grossing Bollywood movie of all time until 3 Idiots crossed its score.
Trade Analyst Taran Adarsh of Bollywood Hungama tweeted the box office collections of holiday on Friday: “#Holiday [Week 2] Fri 4.41 cr, Sat 6.34 cr, Sun 8.78 cr, Mon 3.19 cr, Tue 2.99 cr, Wed 2.75 cr, Thu 2.55 cr. Grand total: ₹ 99.71 cr nett.” A minute later he tweeted, “And as you read this, #Holiday crosses ₹ 100 cr nett in India today [Friday]. HIT.”
Akshay’s Holiday took two weeks to cross the 100 crores mark. However, analysts are predicting Salman Khan’s Eid release Kick to get more than 155 crores in its first weekend. Let us see where the film stands when the year draws to a close.