Mubarakan leads race at box office, beating Raag Desh, Indu Sarkar and others

This week's five new Bollywood new releases have opened to poor response at the domestic box office, but Mubarakan has better collections than Raag Desh, Indu Sarkar, Gutrun Gutargun and Baaraat Company.

An ensemble cast and interesting promos had created a lot of hype for Mubarakan before its release. The movie was released in over 2,350 screens in the domestic market on Friday. This film is much bigger than other new releases in terms of hype, promotion and screen count. Trade experts had predicted that it would start with a bang and lead the race at the domestic box office in this weekend.

But to everyone's surprise, the Arjun Kapoor and Anil Kapoor-starrer received poor response in the morning show. Mubarakan registered better occupancy in single screens than in multiplexes in the first show. Rohit Jaiswal‏, an observer of the Hindi film industry, tweeted: "#Mubarakan opens to 20% occupncy for morning show at all mltiplx... Single scrns will open 30%+..."

The Anees Bazmee-directed rom-com family drama has been successful in impressing viewers and critics. The word-of-mouth is expected to take its collection upwards in the later shows. As per early trends, Mubarakan is likely to collect over Rs 7 crore at the domestic box office on the first day. But it will not be able to beat the opening day record of Arjun Kapoor's Half Girlfriend (Rs 10.27 crore).

Indu Sarkar is produced on small budget of Rs 11 crore and its makers have given it quite a bit of promotion. The controversy surrounding its censorship had got much-needed attention, which was expected to translate into big bucks. But it has not benefited the film, as it registered an average 10 percent occupancy in the morning shows.

On other hand, Raag Desh, Baaraat Company and Gutrun Gutargun lacked hype, promotion and big screen count, and have recorded very poor number of footfalls in the morning shows. KRK‏ aka Kamaal R Khan tweeted: "Film #InduSarkar has got earth shattering opening of 5-10% while #RaagDesh n #BaaratCompany got tsunami type opening of 3-5%! All disasters!"