August 10th, 2007 
Deepak THE BOX OFFICE REPORT CARD OF MAJOR RELEASES: No single hero or heroine could claim to have had a fulfilling affair with the box office in the first six months of 2007. If Amitabh’s Cheeni Kum at least brought a smile to people’s faces, his Nishabd and Eklavya made his fans a tad sad. ShahRukh Khan, Aamir Khan and Hrithik Roshan were busy shooting and lucky not to have had a single release during the bad phase of the industry. Or maybe, the period was bad because the three superstars did not have a single release. Let’s have a look on for how the first half of 2007 turned out for the stars whose films did hit our cinema screens this year BHEJA FRY: The sleeper hit of the first half of 2007 was the non-starcast, small budget Bheja Fry. It came almost out of nowhere and took the city multiplex audience by storm, in the process making Vinay Pathak an overnight star. Made at a very modest budget, the comedy earned almost six to seven times that money as net profit. Bheja Fry worked big time in the small-capacity multiplex screens of big cities, but bombed in the big-capacity single screens of big cities. As for smaller towns, the film fared so poorly that most of the cinemas in ‘B’ and ‘C’ class centers refrained from even releasing it. A classic example of one man’s Bheja fry being another man’s poison! Comedies generally work better in the cities, but the jokes in I were so sophisticated that the masses in cities that still have single-screen cinemas, could not appreciate them. Aap Kaa Surroor: The film which was least expected to find favour with the audience gave the industry reason to smile and those associated with it, reason to laugh all the way to the bank. Himesh Reshammiya’s debut film as hero, Aap Kaa Surroor, was the film that changed the half-yearly report card of the industry. But for this film, the first six months of the year would not have boasted of a single universal hit. NAMASTEY LONDON: Katrina Kaif wasn’t half as lucky as Abhishek Bachchan. Even after proving that she could act in Vipul Shah’s Namastey London, Salman did not jump to tie the knot with her. Although hot as successful as Guru, Namastey London managed to keep its distributors in good spirits though world distribution rights [...]
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