Katrina Kaif starrer horror comedy Phone Bhoot doesn’t perform well at box office; Collects Rs 2 crore on day 1

It is yet another dull Friday at the Hindi box office as new films have failed to deliver at the box office, as has been the case with most releases this year barring a few. Phone Bhoot, led by Katrina Kaif, and co-starring Ishaan Khatter and Siddhant Chaturvedi, opened to an astonishingly low Rs. 1.75 – 2.25 cr nett. The film released on around 1400 screens, which can be said to be a conservative release.  But even in the 1400 odd screens it released in, the occupancy of the film was just around 10-12 percent. The film released along with two other prominent releases namely Mili and Double XL, both of which have failed to put on a show, with cummulative collections sub-Rs. 1 cr nett.

It is that kind of week where a dubbed Kannada film Kantara is recording higher numbers than both dubbed releases and existing releases, Ram Setu and Thank God. Next week will again see a Hollywood film, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, dominating over dominating over Indian films and it won’t be until Drishyam 2 and Bhediya that we see some good collections from Hindi films.

The horror comedy genre of Phone Bhoot is a good one in terms of collections but this film lacks face value and it is showing in the numbers. Also, the film looks more of the spoofy kind and spoof films don’t find many takers. Since the film is not a content film, it may find it hard to sustain. The film needs miraculous growth over the weekend but that too needs a good sample size and the first day crowd is clearly missing.