Opinion: Will PadMan and Black Panther affect Sidharth Malhotra-starrer Aiyaary at the box office?

Sidharth Malhotra's Aiyaary, which released on Friday, February 16, has received mixed reviews from Bollywood critics and audience.

While Manoj Bajpayee and Naseeruddin Shah's performances are being lauded by the audience, the script is said to be poorly written and fails to keep the audience hooked throughout the 2 hours and 40 minutes of runtime.

The lukewarm response to Aiyaary can also be attributed to the fact that the movie was postponed multiple times owing to its effort to avoid a clash with Akshay Kumar's PadMan. It should be mentioned here that multiple delays in a film's release make fans lose interest in it.

Going by the audience's response to Aiyaary, the movie is expected to earn about Rs 5 crore on its opening day.

On the other hand, Aiyaary's once-biggest competitor PadMan is running at the box office at a slow pace. The Akshay starrer, which did a business of Rs 10.26 crore on its opening day, has collected Rs 65 crore (approximately) at the domestic box office in its first week. 

Despite decent earnings, PadMan is expected to give tough competition to Aiyaary, which may struggle to do average business in the opening weekend. 

Although the Siddharth starrer made all attempts to get a solo release, it eventually clashed with the big Hollywood movie Black Panther at the theaters.

It should be recalled that the release date of Veere Di Wedding was also postponed after Hollywood superhero movie Deadpool 2 announced its release date on the same day.

Given that the much-talked-about movie Veere Di Wedding marks Kareena Kapoor Khan's return to the big screen after embracing motherhood, the makers decided to take the safe route and avoid a clash.

In fact, when the first part of Deadpool released last year alongside Aditya Roy Kapur and Katrina Kaif's Fitoor, the Hollywood flick wiped out the Bollywood movie.

Bollywood makers have traditionally not been worried about the release of Hollywood flicks in India. However, with more international films drawing young viewers to theaters in the recent past, Bollywood makers are wary of the consequences.

With multiple movies – PadMan, Padmaavat, new release Black Panther -- already running in theatres, I wonder if the team of spy-thriller Aiyaary took the right decision to release the film on February 16, which falls on the month of Valentine's Day.