You know that feeling when you are at a party and everyone else is sharing a joke but you missed the beginning and aren’t sure why they are laughing or if it was actually funny? That’s how I feel about Commando 2. Suddenly it’s everywhere, and I have no idea what it is or why I should care!
Luckily, I am not alone in not caring about Commando 2! Or Rangoon, for that matter. Or anything else really that is playing right now. Every single Indian film at the American box office is making less than $2,000 per screen (as always, figures from renttrack by way of Bollywoodhungama).
Remember the rule of thumb that I put up periodically on these posts:
$6,000 per screen and up: Record breaking hit, legit phenomenon (Neerja, 3 Idiots)
$5,000 per screen and up: acceptable for opening weekend for a Khan release, really good for any non-Khan film.
$3,000 and up: acceptable for a major non-Khan release (for instance, I expect Badrinath to do about this range this weekend), good for a Khan film or other major release in week two.
$2,000 and up: breaking even point for most films, kind of embarrassing for any major star or major release on opening weekend. Might as well retire and wander the earth for a Khan in opening weekend. Barely respectable for a Khan in week two, not bad for a non-major release in week two.
<$2,000: Hilariously bad. Maybe okay for a Khan film or a major release once you get to week 3 or 4, but in week 2 even, this is not good.
And this week, EVERYONE IS A LOSER!!!! <$2,000 all around.
Rangoon, in week 2, dropped like a stone down to $925 per screen in America. Same everywhere else, ranging from a low of $500 per screen in the UK to a high of $1,934 in Malaysia. Which is just kind of odd, are there no big Tamil movies this week so the Malaysians are super bored? Any reader from Malaysia who can shed light on this?
Commando 2, whatever it is, only made $757 per screen on only 40 screens in the US. So not much money, but they also weren’t expecting much money based on the screen count. Right around a thousand per screen everywhere else too. Except for Malaysia where it dropped below $500 per screen (because everyone was watching Rangoon, I guess). And New Zealand where it soured to $2,000 per screen. I wonder why? Did they film on location there or something?
(Also, am I the only one who watched this and went “What happened to Tiger Shroff’s face, why does he look different?” And then realized it was a different actor?)
But here’s the big story for me, Ezra opened on a whopping 70 SCREENS IN THE UK!!!!! I almost feel like that might be a typo, that’s more than even the major Hindi releases get. Maybe a Khan film might crawl up that high, but it would be rare. How big is the Malayalam community in the UK anyway? I always pictures more North Indians there and more South Indians in America for some reason. I mean, I could still be right, if that 70 figure is correct, that means Ezra made $13 per screen, which is not great. If it is a typo (looking more and more likely) and the real figure is 7 screens, than Ezra made about $1,200 per screen. Which is kind of okay for a Malayalam film in a semi-new market.
In general though, this is pretty much what the box office looks like in March through April. No school holidays, no big family gatherings, and IPL is about to start (April 5th through May 21 this year). It’s a good time for dumping your bad movies when no one will really notice.
It’s even worse this year because of the one film that is bucking the trend. Just like Bahubaali 1 released in the middle of Ramadan, traditionally a terrible time for a release, this time Bahubaali 2 is coming out at the end of April, smack in the middle of IPL.
But, for this kind of a film, this is a brilliant release strategy. If you know your film will build its own buzz and get the audience no matter what, then release it when the optimal numbers of screens will be available for the longest possible open run. Bahubaali is going to do that like crazy in a month, but this is also, on a smaller scale, what Dharma is hoping for with Badrinath. It’s a small clever film. On a big weekend like Diwale, or even Valentine’s, it might get swallowed up. But left to itself, it can find it’s own audience.
dontcallitbollywood 
The song video from Commando 2 has been the bane of my existence the last two weeks. It’s in HEAVY rotation on the B4U music video channel. It’s not very good but the worst part is that it’s super catchy and a total ear-worm. I had a good chuckle over your Tiger Shroff comment. I had probably watched the video ten times before I realized it was a different guy. I just thought he’d really bulked up!
Commando 2 isn’t playing at any of the theaters near me. They all still have the Oscar film dump. They’re only showing Rangoon and Sargi (a Punjabi film directed by Neeru Bajwa, the Canadian-born actress from Jatt & Juliet).
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Now you are just playing into my Canadian prejudices! Punjabi films ALWAYS do well up there, I am picturing a country filled with Punjabis.
The showtimes still haven’t been posted near me, but I have my fingers crossed for Badrinath domination this weekend. I really want to see it, and I also think it will probably be healthier for the movie theaters than Rangoon or Commando 2.
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My area (from Niagara to Toronto) does have a large Punjabi and Sikh population. I’ve discovered a small theater on the outskirts of Toronto that shows Malayalam movies but other than that, it’s all Punjabi around here. I’m not complaining- now that I’m a fan of Diljit’s work, I’ll definitely check out more of the films in theaters. I’ll probably watch Sargi if it’s still playing when we go to see Badrinath.
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I did watch the first Commando. I had high hopes for Vidyut after his strong performance as the villain in the first Force. But he was so disappointing and the female lead was even worse. I will say Vidyut is so much better than Tiger in terms of martial arts/action ability (maybe not dancing though) and he has a stronger on-screen presence, IMO (he was good in Force after all). Tiger is just awful (and the perfect case for nepotism gone wrong).
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Based on the box office, I am going to assume that Vidyut didn’t improve much between Commando 1 and 2. Or else the film team didn’t improve much.
If I can believe The Internet, Vidyut is a real trained martial artist, like Akshay. Only, I was thinking about it, Akshay didn’t start out as a martial artist. He was kind of a comic/action hero, he had a lot of charm and humor, not just his action abilities. Does Vidyut seem to have anything besides the action?
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I had great hopes for Vidyut when he first started — actually, before his first film released, and I was just reading the promotional stuff about it. He’s an expert level master in several kinds of martial arts, he’s very good looking (or was, at the beginning), and I was hoping for a really great new action hero. I didn’t see Commando, or even Force, though I got it from the library just for Vidyut. Unfortunately it started with a torture scene that I couldn’t stomach, so I had to give up on that. So the first time I actually saw Vidyut act was in the Tamil film Thupakki (remade in Hindi as Holiday – a Soldier is never off duty), and, well, he was pathetic. 😦 I mean as an actor. HIs fighting and everything was great, of course, but he couldn’t project any emotion (he was the main villain, and couldn’t do menacing). As someone said above, he had no screen presence. So I never was interested in seeing Commando, and I guess others also felt the same, so he’s not getting many films. Is that fair? I don’t know. But it’s less unfair than it might seem. He might hang around in the industry doing low budget action films, and build himself a niche, but I don’t see him becoming a big star.
I think Akshay Kumar did start as mainly an action, and specifically a martial arts, star. He did a lot of mindless action films at the beginning of his career, before he got into comedy with the Priyadarshan film that I’m blanking the name of.
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I was thinking of his Khiladi series, which had those great action scenes, but also like a sense of humor about it. Which for me is what really set them apart from the other action movies, they weren’t all dark and deep and serious, it was just fun to watch them.
Sounds like that is NOT the case with Vidyut? No fun to watch at all, no matter how good the action scenes were?
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By the time of the Khiladi series, Akshay was already fairly established. I was referring to the films he did before that.
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Einthusan has just plugged Commando on FB – best avoided, do you think?
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