No Time To Die, the James Bond spy film, and Marvel’s Venom: Let There Be Carnage are the top picks for moviegoers in the first weekend after theatres reopened in Maharashtra, as per Box Office India reports.
After months of hiatus, cinema halls in Maharashtra reopened on October 22 with actor Pratik Gandhi‘s Bhavai, Sharman Joshi’s Babloo Bachelor and a re-release of Akshay Kumar‘s Bell Bottom that had released in August, another Marvel film Shang Chi and the American epic science fiction film Dune.
On the first day of the reopening, footfalls in the state were heavier for Hollywood films like Shang Chi, No Time To Die, Dune, and Venom 2 – Let There Be Carnage.
There was a promotion of free tickets for an hour across the state on the morning of the first day by the multiplex chain Inox which led to a huge turnout with 98% occupancy on the aforementioned shows and over 5000 tickets getting sold.
The weekend also saw a heavier footfall for the James Bond film majorly along with the sequel to Venom which recorded good occupancy in evening shows, as per reports.
The 25th James Bond film No Time To Die recorded better collections due to the Maharashtra theatre opening with majority of the revenue coming from Mumbai city. As per the reports, the film has collected around 25 crore, 1.50 crore nett behind Shang Chi.
Recommended
India first went into lockdown in March 2020 in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic. After cases started going down, theatres in the country slowly started reopening in October 2020, with Maharashtra’s cinema halls opening in November the same year.
However, the country was soon hit by the deadly second wave of the pandemic in April 2021, which led to another series of lockdowns and theatres were shut once again. While cinema halls in many other states, including Tamil Nadu, West Bengal, Telangana, and Karnataka, have since resumed services, theatres in Maharashtra are among the last ones to be reopened.
On October 12, the Maharashtra government issued a series of Standard Operating Procedures (SOP) for the same.