Box Office Bollywood 2014

UPDATE, THURSDAY AM: Salman Khan’s may not have broken any all-time Bollywood records when it was released last Friday, but that hasn’t stopped it from racing to the top of the yearly charts. With 148.66 crore (about $25M) through Wednesday, the movie is now the top film of 2014 at home and is expected to continue to grow with no other big openers in the marketplace until August 8. Kick bested Khan’s own Jai Ho which was released in January and ultimately made 116 crore. Kick also becomes one of the fastest movies ever to pass the 100 crore mark, having done it in five days, as Bollywhood Hungama points out. That’s on a par with Khan’s Ek Tha Tiger, his highest grossing film ever, and just below last year’s Dhoom 3, Krrish 3 and Chennai Express. The latter film also came out during this same Eid holiday period that’s going on now. It’s one of the most lucrative at the Indian box office. Kick is still playing in North America and the UK and we should have updated figures for those runs this weekend.

PREVIOUS, TUESDAY AM: At 48 and with more than 80 films under his belt, Bollywood superstar Salman Khan is one of Indian cinema’s biggest draws. He shares A-List status with a group that includes Shah Rukh Khan, Aamir Khan, Akshay Kumar, Ranbir Kapoor and Hrithik Roshan. Working in an industry whose box office is up to 90% driven by local movies, they have a rabid fanbase. And that spreads throughout the diaspora, making it a global event each time one of their films is released. Khan just returned to the Eid al Fitr holiday season with, an action romance thriller released by UTV on Friday. Last week, I wrote about expectations for the highly-anticipated film’s debut, and with many figures now in, here’s the post-mortem on the latest from the legend.