You know I shouldn’t be your primary source for Indian political and other hard news, right?  Because I don’t have a strong background in that, and more importantly, I’m not a journalist.  If anything, I’m an analyst.  I take news other people have already reported and put it together in interesting ways.  Anyway, moviemavengal just tweeted me an article that does all the hard news work of the ADHM protests for me.  Check out this link.

Speaking of things that other people find out and I just report, Indian box office figures!  As always, huge caveat here because India doesn’t have a formal centralized box office reporting system like there is for the global figures.  The two movies have been positioned as going head to head, with only one “winning”.  But in fact, as people have sort of known all along but promoted the battle narrative because it gets press, they were always going for a very different kind of audience, which is reflected in very different box office patterns.

ADHM: In the first 4 days, it has already surpassed the lifetime collections of Ki & Ka and is rapidly closing in on the lifetime collections of Student of the Year and Tamasha.  It opened all right, 13 crore estimated on Friday and Saturday, dropping to 10 crore on Sunday.  But then jumping to 17 crore on Monday.  As I said before, this is a funny release weekend.  Because it’s a family holiday, most people aren’t going to the movies during the holiday, they are waiting until the day off on Monday and next weekend.  But even so, 13 crore on opening day is quite impressive!

Shivaay: Terrible opening.  Not embarrassingly bad, but not not great, especially considering it had a bigger star headlining it than ADHM.  10 crore on Friday and Saturday, dropping to 8 crore on Sunday.  On a regular weekend, for a major Ajay Devgan release, these would be considered flop numbers.  But it’s a holiday weekend, and Shivaay is going after the hardcore holiday crowd.  ADHM, that could play to young people in the city, ones who may not spend all of Diwale weekend celebrating.  But Shivaay was looking for the single-screen audience, the family audience, the aunties who are slaving away in the kitchen and the kids who are screaming at sparklers right now.  And so it is Monday that will tell them everything, and on Monday it took a huge jump to 17 crore.  Tuesday is also a work holiday, but not as much of a family holiday, so there could be another bump.

What’s more important for Shivaay is the word of mouth.  ADHM already got really good reviews, and plenty of buzz on the internet.  That kind of feedback moves a lot faster, and ADHM knows where it’s at with that.  But Shivaay is looking for the single-screen audience, which means the profit is going to come from repeat viewers and a long run, not from a massive opening weekend.  A growing box office on Monday is a good sign for that, but it could still drop off today or tomorrow, and die completely next weekend.  While ADHM already has it’s “report card”, and will easily make the majority of it’s profit within the next 4 days, Shivaay is still on the bubble.

(Shivaay on the bubble.  HA!  I crack myself up)

That ADHM “report card” is what brings me to the really really really interesting article!  It’s from FirstPost, which I don’t always like, but this is an excellent piece.  It goes into all kinds of detail, explaining why exactly the ADHM non-issue was leaped on by so many people.  And we now know it was truly a non-issue, because the ADHM box office has suffered not at all.  The audience doesn’t care, the exhibitors don’t care, even the protesters don’t really care in the end.

My common sense analysis already told me that there must be some political issue hiding behind it, because no one really cares that much about Fawad Khan acting.  But this article tells you exactly what the political issues were for all the players, and why they were so quick to build up a smokescreen of outrage over them.  Really, READ IT!