Jai Ho's tepid opening may mean trouble for Eros

The impact of Jai Ho's poor opening will affect Eros International way more than Sohail Khan. The latter in fact has already recovered the cost of production of the movie when he sold it to Eros for a staggering Rs 120 crore. The deal includes the all the rights of the movie including distirbution, satellite, music and digital. The movie was made at an estimated Rs 90 crore (including Salman Khan's fees at Rs 30 crore).

While Eros has been able to recover some of the cost of the movie through satellite rights (Rs 50 crore) and music rights (sold to T-series for around Rs 10 crore), it still needs to make Rs 60 crore at the box office to break even. This means that gross box office collections of the movie need to be at least Rs 120 crore, considering that nearly 50 per cent of the box office collection goes in tax and exhibitor share.

All hopes are now pinned on the collections on Saturday and Sunday, when maximum people are expected to watch the film. However, the golden figure of Rs 200 crore box office collections seems like a faraway dream for co-producers Sohail Khan and Eros International. Analysts believe the film will cross Rs 100 crore in the first week only and only if it maintains steady collections of Rs 12 to 13 crore a day from Monday and if the first weekend collections cross Rs 50 crore.

“Content wise, Jai Ho is not a bad film. It has a message and it has Salman in good form. The film's undoing lies in the lack of chemistry between the lead pair which is one of the things people look forward to in Salman's movies. Additionally, the film's music has not really clicked. The overall impact of the movie is not so strong,” says Shaaminder Mailk, independent exhibitor and trade analyst (north India).

Jai Ho, which marked the return of Sohail Khan as a director after Hello Brother in 1999, released in 4400 screens across the country. It registered occupancy of 40 to 50 per cent in multiplexes, which experts say is way below usual for Salman Khan movies. The single screens fared batter as they recorded average occupancy of 60 to 80 per cent with many running to packed houses through the day.

Jai Ho's run at the box office also depends on what kind of competition it faces from Abhay Deol's One by Two that releases on 31 January.

The first high profile release of the year Jai Ho, starring box office dynamo Salman Khan, may turn out to be the first disappointment of 2014. The film managed to rake in Rs 17.5 crore on its opening day, much lower the box office analysts' expectation of Rs 22 to 25 crore.