Avengers: Endgame has not only become the biggest Hollywood grosser in India but is also sneaking up on some of Bollywood’s biggest hits. The concluding film in the decade-long Marvel cinematic universe journey, which released on April 26, garnered over Rs326 crore ($46.6 million) at the box office by the end of its 12th day in theatres across the country, according to a May 08 report on Bollywood news site Koimoi. This stellar performance has put the movie among the top 10 domestic earners of all-time in India. Rank Movie title Net India Box Office collection (Rs crores) 1 Bahubali 2—The Conclusion (2017) 511.3 2 Dangal (2016) 387.39 3 Sanju (2018) 341.22 4 PK (2014) 339.5 5 Tiger Zinda Hai (2017) 339.16 6 Avengers: Endgame (2019)* 326.95 7 Bajrangi Bhaijaan (2015) 320.34 8 Sultan (2016) 300.45 9 Padmaavat (2018) 300 10 Dhoom 3 (2013) 280.25 Source: Koimoi *Still running “The demand for tickets has been sky-high since advance bookings opened on BookMyShow, with cinemas adding new shows every day to match fans’ rising demands,” Ashish Saksena, COO of the online ticketing platform’s cinema division, told Quartz. “So far, BookMyShow has sold about eight million tickets and counting, making it the highest in-demand Hollywood film in India.” And this reflects just 48% of the net box office collection. The sequel to last year’s Avengers: Infinity War was highly anticipated. “The phenomenon around the entire film series has been very well cultivated by Marvel, by introducing one character at a time. They were patient enough, taking 11 years and 22 films to deliver a conclusion like Avengers: Endgame,” Saksena added. Though the actual numbers are still under wraps, Disney’s marketing expenditure for Endgame is one of the highest across the industry, the company’s head of studio entertainment, Bikram Duggal, told daily newspaper Mint. Releasing in multiple languages also gave a boost. “Disney puts a lot of effort in dubbing. If you watch Endgame in Hindi, it is as hilarious in Hindi as it is in English. Because they don’t translate but rewrite the dialogues,” Amit Sharma, the managing director of Miraj Cinemas, a cinema exhibition company focussed on bringing multiplexes to small town India, told Moneycontrol. “Disney understands markets far better than its competitors.” However, viewers took to Twitter to say that the Hindi and Tamil versions were not up to the mark. Some of them watched it out of desperation when tickets for English shows—especially at the few IMAX ones—were sold out. They returned to watch the English shows later. Ardent fans have seen it multiple times. The breakout success of the movie smashed two myths about Indian cinema, according to a May 04 tweet by trade analyst Taran Adarsh. First, it is widely believed that public festivals drive traffic. For years, Bollywood stars Shahrukh Khan and Salman Khan have released their movies on Diwali and Eid-ul-Fitr, respectively. Avengers hit the screens on a non-festive day and still romped home in style. Secondly, Endgame’s success comes despite a smaller screen count. Avengers had just 2,845 screens versus big Bollywood releases that go right to the interiors of the country, playing on upwards of 4,000 or 4,500 screens at times, Adarsh noted. However, it did help that there were no big Bollywood flicks clashing with Endgame in its first week. The question now is, with Karan Johar’s Student of the Year 2 releasing today (May 10), can the superhero franchise continue its astronomical run?<doc-sep>Those were the days of single screens. Those were the days when simultaneous worldwide release of Hollywood films was unheard of. Those were the days when the success of a film was measured in jubilees. We are talking of the pre-nineties era when English movie fans in India had to wait for years to catch the latest Hollywood blockbusters on screen. Cut to the present. Avengers: Endgame is two weeks old in India. Its release here coinciding with the USA launch not only created a record for the opening day collections for a Hollywood film in India, but also matched the biggest openers of the Khans. Now, at the end of the second week’s run, the superheroes ensemble movie, released in English and other Indian languages, seems certain to cross the Rs 350-crore mark over the weekend, giving some big Bollywood grossers the blushes. Endgame is already the biggest-ever Hollywood hit in India, upstaging its own previous installment, Avengers: Infinity War, which had collected Rs 226 crore in the country. Read: James Cameron Congratulates Avengers Endgame Team Read: Robert Downey Jr Deserves Oscar More Than Anyone Hollywood imports to India these days are serious business with multi-language releases (Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, apart from English) across 2000-plus screens for big guns like Avengers being the norm; a far cry from the early days of foreign cinema in India when the movies were mostly restricted to the metros and limited to one screen per city. And unlike the simultaneous theatrical releases worldwide, which is the norm these days, many movies would hit Indian theatres years after the US launch. A case in point: Christopher Reeve-starrer Superman was released in the US in 1978, but Indian fans had to wait till 1981!Just about a decade before that, English movie buffs in Bombay were enthralled by the Gregory Peck-starrer Mackenna’s Gold, which went on in the early 1970s to become the mother of all Hollywood blockbusters in the Indian market. The movie, in the western genre with Omar Sharif, Eli Wallach and Edward G Robinson in its star cast, proved to be a dud on its release in the US in 1969. But, within a couple of years when it released here, the Indian audience lapped up the treasure-hunt western potboiler as the movie celebrated an unprecedented (for a Hollywood film) golden jubilee run in the now-defunct Strand cinema, in Colaba in Bombay. Its stupendous success inspired Hindi spinoffs like Feroz Khan-starrer Kala Sona in 1975 and Dharmendra-Shatrughan Sinha starrer Zalzala in 1988. From the Wild West to the Far East. After McKenna’s success came Enter the Dragon which released in 1975 in India, two years after its international launch. According to an article by film critic Khalid Mohamed in India Today,ran for 32 weeks at New Excelsior in Bombay. It set the stage for dominance of the kung fu genre in India’s foreign movie market. Enter the Dragon – a Hong Kong-US joint production -- did worldwide business of USD 90 million, which was much less than that year’s biggest grosser – The Exorcist -- which raked in USD 441 million. But in Mumbai it was the dragon that won the race. Though The Exorcist managed a strong 20-week run at Eros, it could not achieve the distinction of a jubilee hit which Enter the Dragon did. The impact of Enter the Dragon was long-lasting with several kung fu and karate-based wannabes over decades in Hindi films. The other aspect of its influence could be seen in fight sequences in big budget films where the stars would strike karate chop poses, almost always unintentionally comical, before breaking into the usual dishum-dishum punches. In the 1977 super hit Amar Akbar Anthony, there is a sequence in which Vinod Khanna braces for a fight with Amitabh Bachchan who, looking at his pose, remarks, “Oh you know karate, so you would know kung fu too.” Read: Avengers Endgame Cast And Crew 'Fully Assembled' in This Pic Read: Marvel's Stirring, Emotional Superhero Marathon A worthy successor to Enter the Dragon, 36th Chamber of Shaolin, which was released in the US in 1978 and in India four years later, is considered one of the greatest martial arts films. It enjoyed a silver jubilee run at Eros in the early eighties. Incidentally, the lead actor in 36th Chamber – Xian Jinxi a.k.a Gordon Liu -- played the villain in the 2009 Akshay Kumar-starrer, Chandni Chowk to China. In the climax, the celluloid Shaolin master dies at the hands of the hero, getting killed by Akshay with a kitchen knife. The kung fu acts were followed by an unexpected entry to the list of international jubilees in Bombay’s cinema halls. The 1981 Bo Derek-starrer Tarzan the Ape Man, directed by her husband John Derek, was panned by critics across the board. It featured in many worst-ever movie lists. Film critic Leonard Maltin, writing for his movie guide, considered it so bad that he contemplated devising a rating lower than BOMB to describe the film. However, Bo’s steamy rendition of Jane Parker seduced the audience to theatres in Mumbai. The film – whose posters featured Bo Derek swinging on a vine with no sign of Tarzan -- ran to packed houses at Metro theatre for 25 weeks and its super success saw a few Bo Derek starrers like 10 hit the theatres Mumbai though with varying results. By the late eighties, movie buffs in India were more in sync with their western counterparts, thanks to the video player boom. Pirated prints of Hollywood films would hit the Mumbai video circuit within days of their US release. This was the beginning of the end of the jubilee era and one of the last English movies to enjoy this status was the Julia Roberts-Richard Gere-starrer Pretty Woman. The fairy tale romance of a call girl and a billionaire ran to packed houses for 30-plus weeks at Eros. A few years later, Hollywood began to explore the potential of the Indian market in the right earnest. As a result, Spielberg’s Jurassic Park, released here in April 1994 almost a year after the US release, became the first movie to be released multi-lingually, on screens across India. In a 2013 article in LiveMint, film journalist Nandini Ramnath writes that the movie, thanks to it being dubbed in Hindi, Tamil and Telugu, helped it make to the 25-week club and earn Rs 19 crore. Now, 25 years later, the takings in box-office are pushing the Rs 100-crore mark, that too within days. Weeks are no more talked about. Directed by Joe and Anthony Russo, Avengers: Endgame is currently playing in theatres. (The authors are ex-journalists and now run bookstores under the brand name Paperback in Mumbai and Bengaluru. They both take keen nostalgic interest in the city of Mumbai, films and cricket) Follow @News18Movies for more<doc-sep>The Marvel Studios film has collected a whopping ₹372.56 crore (gross box office collection) and ₹312.95 crore (net box office collection) in just 10 days. Avengers: Endgame has crossed the ₹300 crore box office mark in India, becoming the first Hollywood film to achieve the benchmark in the country. According to a statement issued on behalf of the makers, the Marvel Studios film has collected a whopping ₹372.56 crore (gross box office collection) and ₹312.95 crore (net box office collection) in just 10 days. It released in Hindi, English, Tamil and Telugu across 2,845 screens in India on April 26. “Avengers: Endgame continues to sparkle... Rakes in big numbers on (second) Saturday and Sunday... Adds ₹50 crore plus in second weekend, which is remarkable,” trade guru Taran Adarsh tweeted. The ₹300 crore club in India includes PK, Bajrangi Bhaijaan, Sultan, Dangal, Tiger Zinda Hai, Padmaavat and Sanju, Adarsh pointed out, adding that Baahubali 2 (Hindi) is the only film in the ₹500 crore net club at the Indian box office. From Iron Man to Captain America to Hulk to Black Widow to Thor — Marvel superheroes have assembled one last time in Avengers: Endgame to save the world and fight against Thanos. Endgame, the 22nd film in Marvel Cinematic Universe, marks the end of an era that revolved around Iron Man, Thor, the Hulk and Captain America, among others. It is helmed by the Russo Brothers Joe and Anthony. The star-studded cast includes Robert Downey Jr., Chris Evans, Mark Ruffalo, Chris Hemsworth, Scarlett Johansson, Jeremy Renner, Don Cheadle, Paul Rudd, Brie Larson, Karen Gillan, Danai Gurira, Bradley Cooper and Josh Brolin, among others.<doc-sep>
Marvel fans are finding themselves in a virtual queue to grab tickets for the highly anticipated superhero film Avengers: Endgame. BookMyShow has witnessed a record advance ticket sale with one million tickets sold in just over a day. BookMyShow witnessed a peak of 18 tickets per second, even before the film releases in cinemas on April 26 in India in English, Hindi, Tamil and Telugu. Ashish Saksena, Chief Operating Officer - Cinemas, BookMyShow, said in a statement issued on Monday evening: “We expect Avengers: Endgame to break more records as cinemas continue to open the advance bookings.” Avengers: Endgame is the 22nd film from the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the latest after Captain Marvel, which released last month. The film stars Robert Downey Jr., Chris Evans, Mark Ruffalo, Chris Hemsworth, Scarlett Johansson and Brie Larson, amongst others. “Avengers: Endgame is not just a movie, it’s an epic culmination of a decade-long journey which the fans have taken with us across 22 films of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The phenomenal interest shown by audiences across the country, is testament of how this is one of the most anticipated movies for the fans and we can’t wait for them to watch it,” said Bikram Duggal, Head - Studio Entertainment, Disney India. Trade analyst Taran Adarsh tweeted on Monday: “Avengers: Endgame advance booking is unheard of, unimaginable and unprecedented. Much better than several Hindi biggies that opened in 2018 and 2019.” #AvengersEndgame advance booking is unheard of, unimaginable and unprecedented... Much, much better than several #Hindi biggies that opened in 2018 and 2019... Eyes a record-breaking, historic start in #India... Dear BO records, get ready to be smashed and shattered! — taran adarsh (@taran_adarsh) April 22, 2019 The interest has been more in metropolitan cities like Delhi and Mumbai. Rahul Kadbet, Vice President Programming, Carnival Cinemas, told IANS: “Around 2.25 lakh tickets have been sold which is about 74 per cent of the capacity for weekend. We have 1000+ shows per day for the movie in over 100 cities. Maximum tickets were sold in Delhi/NCR and Mumbai.” The rush for tickets for the film, which will show supervillain Thanos engaging in an epic battle with superheroes like Iron Man, Thor and Captain America, was anticipated. Rajender Singh Jyala, Chief Programming Officer, INOX Leisure Ltd. said: “As anticipated, across the country, the shows of Avengers: Endgame are almost sold out in a very short time. The first day advance sales have been unprecedented.” The craze for the film has also made some fly to different cities. Imphal-based engineer Sanjay Nongmaithem told IANS: “I have been following the series since its beginning in 2008 with Iron Man so, I want to see how it culminates. My eight-year-old daughter, Gracy, is also a fan of the Avengers. In Manipur, our theatres don’t screen Bollywood or Hollywood films so we are left with no choice but to fly to Guwahati, which is nearby.” One Twitter also posted a request on Twitter to the film’s directors -- the Russo Brothers. “I am from India and a huge Marvel fan. In Silchar, Assam, there are two movie halls but none are screening Avengers.... Help us.” Follow @htshowbiz for more ott:10