The penultimate week of the year will see five new Hindi films with 7 Hours To Go, A Scandall, Junooniyat, Raman Raghav 2.0 and Shorgul buts its unlikely any of these will make much any impact unless the word of mouth is very strong. The Hollywood release Independence Day 2 will take the honors though probably not the level of films like Fast & Furious 7, The Avengers and The Jungle Book.
Udta Punjab will probably lead as far as Hindi films go as the film has done well in the North and even in week two it should run well in these markets.
The wait is now for Sultan to get the second half of the year off to a flyer and smash initial box office records. There have been over 100 Hindi releases already in the first six months and barring Baaghi none have really opened. Most films did not open and the few that did manage to get some crowd initially, it was still below from what was expected from the film.
This has meant a poor results in the first half of 2016 as with films struggling it harder to sustain with every passing year, the initial gains ever more importance and that has just not happened in the first half of the year. The second half has better releases as usual but films will have to open better if higher numbers are to be seen.
