| After a somewhat dead and dreary two weeks almost entirely devoid of any major Bollywood buzz, apart from the cat and mouse Ayodhya politics resulting into a similar story for the release dates of Endhiran and Anjaana Anjaani. Eventually, the verdict is out, and so are the movies that had lined in a fairly long queue. Friday saw the bombardment of multiple choices upon the Bollywood lovers throughout the nation, with the release of S. Shankar’s sci-fi blinder ROBOT, Siddharth Anand’s ANJAANA ANJAANI, Aatish Kapadia’s KHICHDI – THE MOVIE and another small budget movie starring K.K. Menon and Rajpal Yadav, called BENNY AND BABLU.
Already delayed a week due to the Ayodhya decision tensions, Rajinikanth starrer Robot (the Tamil version is called Endhiran) shed its covers and the nation witnessed a blitzkrieg of fascinating special effects and international quality showmanship on the big screen. Loads of mystique about the whole concept of a human-android robot story, and the tag of the most expensive movie in Asia resulted in a hysteria of sorts in the Southern part of the country with the Friday being an early Diwali of sorts for the multitudes of Rajini fans. Multiplex owners have already gone on record commenting that this will be the biggest hit for a long time and the shows are running full for many days in advance. However, the situation is not as cheerful in the rest of the country. With a reported average occupancy of around 35 per cent, Robot would be desperately hoping for a bloom in the cash collection as the producers need the movie to click big time all over in order to recover their inputs.
Anjaana Anjaani, thankfully for Siddharth Anand, has no such immediate worries. The metro audience welcomed the contemporary romantic love story and this resulted in almost house full theatres on the first day in urbane centres like Mumbai, Pune, Baroda, Hyderabad, Kolkatta, Vizag and Jaipur. Though other parts of the nation did not prove this fruitful for the release with a reported 40 per cent occupancy, the weekend is almost certain to gear up the cash drive for Anjaana Anjaani. An official acknowledgement pending, the word is that the movie has collected more than Rs. 8 crore on the first day.
Fox Star Studios’ Khichdi – The Movie did succeed in grabbing the attention of the cinema goers and diverted traffic from the two big releases to a certain degree. Though the average occupancy for this one also stays limited at 30 per cent, but considering the budgets involved in the making, producers might not be complaining too much. Playing a safe game with some surety of clicking with the people and not going overdrive with the production budgets seems to be catching up after the Peepli [Live] success story. Khichdi – The Movie cost Rs. 4 crore for the making, and the producer Jamnadas Majethia is pretty confidant of reaching the profit mark very soon.
This is about it for the more popular releases this week. The countdown has begun to Emraan Hashmi starrer CROOK which rings your doorbells on the 8th of October. | 
