Very very early box office figures are out, showing both Fitoor and Sanam Re had a slow opening, but Sanam Re was ever so slightly better.  It remains to be seen what will happen in the next few days, and what the worldwide figures will look like.

Fitoor made 5.16 crore on Friday in India and 1.2 in UAE.  No other figures are yet available, although if my experience of 20 people on opening night is anything to go by, the North American numbers are not going to look good.

Meanwhile, Sanam Re made 7.20 in India alone on opening night, no figures available for anywhere else.  But if my experience, of it not even playing anywhere in my city, is anything to go by, the global figures are going to be non-existent.

But really, this is a very limited sample, since we are talking about opening night figures.  Opening figures come from three places: Stars, Songs, and Screens.  I already talked about how T-Series went hard after every screen in the country.  They also made sure to have a fantastic soundtrack, released well in advance of the film, to help build interest (I mean, it is T-Series, the whole company was built on soundtracks).  Stars, not so much.

But then Fitoor turns out to have relied a little too much on its stars.  Aditya Roy Kapoor has been in some hit films, but the films were the hits, not him.  Katrina, same thing.  And the Fitoor soundtrack was not as good as it could have been.  And it only opening on 1200 screens in India.

But this could all change with the worldwide figures.  Even if Fitoor gets terrible word of mouth and reviews, if it is opening unopposed in markets like mine, it will still have a good week.  There is a good chance we will have another situation where T-Series gets the home market and Fitoor gets the overseas and they both end up making a profit.  Of course, that’s just until next weekend when Neerja is going to sweep both.