Hindi
Sunny Leone fails to grab eyeballs at box office
MUMBAI: It is sex over sermon and Sunny Leone scores over legendary actors Paresh Rawal, Naseeruddin Shah and Annu Kapoor as her first double role film, Ek Paheli Leela, scores over talent packed Dharam Sankat Mein.
Not that Ek Paheli Leela is great shakes. It remained on the lower side on Friday and failed to add to its opening day figures on Saturday. The film ended its first weekend with figures of Rs 11.2 crore mainly on the strength of its performance at single screens.
Dharam Sankat Mein lacked in the pre-release promotion and suffered on this count. The film had a poor opening despite stalwarts like Rawal, Shah and Malik in the cast. The comparison to Rawal’s trendsetting OMG: Oh My God was inevitable and Dharam Sanakat Mein fell short by miles besides the fact that quite a few films on the similar theme have followed OMG. The film gets a poor opening and barely manages to cross the Rs 1 crore-mark on its opening day and hardly improves on Saturday. The film has had a weekend of Rs 5.1 crore.
Barefoot To Goa stays out of contention as far as box office is concerned. Such group funded idealistic films need a commercial approach.
Detective Byomkesh Bakshi, another small film after Dum Laga Ke Haisha from Yash Raj Films, remains average. An indulgent film based on the WW2 era Bengali fictional character, the film falls prey to its mediocre content. It manages to collect Rs 19.97 crore for the first week. The film has added Rs 3.27 for its second weekend to take its two week tally to Rs 23.14 crore.
Barkhaa is a lost cause. The film fails to cross Rs 1 crore mark even after two weeks.
Dum Laga Ke Haisha has collected Rs 35 lakh in its sixth week to take its six week tally to Rs 30.32 crore.
NH10 added Rs 30 lakh in its fourth week to take its four-week total to Rs 30.5 crore.
Far from the days when English films released in India eons after their premiere release in the West, that too at one Metro at a time, Fast & Furious 7, released at multiple screens across India and opened to a bumper response.
The fact that the brand equity had been built over the years helped as did the ensemble star cast. The film collected better than many Hindi super star films in its first week with figures of about Rs 70 crore.
Vidhu Vinod Chopra’s foray into Hollywood cinema with Broken Horses, a rehash of his 1989 Hindi film Parinda, comes a cropper. The film has gone almost unnoticed in Indian cinemas.
Hindi
Jio Studios, Sanjay Dutt team up to revive Khal Nayak
Rights acquired for new version, format under wraps as remake plans take shape.
MUMBAI: The villain is back and this time, he’s rewriting his own script. Jio Studios has partnered with Three Dimension Motion Pictures and Aspect Entertainment to revive the 1993 cult classic Khal Nayak, marking a fresh chapter for one of Bollywood’s most iconic anti-hero stories. The original film, directed by Subhash Ghai under Mukta Arts, was a commercial and cultural milestone, with Sanjay Dutt’s portrayal of Ballu becoming one of Hindi cinema’s most memorable performances.
Dutt, along with Aksha Kamboj, has now acquired the rights from the original creators, bringing on board Jio Studios and its President Jyoti Deshpande to steer the project creatively.
While the exact format whether remake, sequel, prequel, or a completely new narrative remains undisclosed, the collaboration aims to reinterpret the story for contemporary audiences while retaining the essence that made the original a defining film of the 1990s.
The move taps into a broader industry trend of reviving legacy intellectual property, particularly characters with strong recall value. “Khal Nayak” was notable for pushing mainstream Hindi cinema into morally grey territory at a time when heroes were largely one-dimensional, making Ballu’s character a standout.
The project also marks the film production debut of Aspect Entertainment, signalling a push towards more technology-led storytelling frameworks. Meanwhile, Jio Studios continues to expand its slate, having built a library of over 200 films and series, with more than 60 titles collectively winning 500-plus awards.
For Dutt, the revival is as much personal as it is strategic, a return to a role that reshaped his career. For the industry, it is another sign that nostalgia, when paired with scale, remains a powerful box-office proposition.
Because in Bollywood, some villains never fade, they just wait for the perfect comeback.
