Mumbai, Jun 6: As Bollywood touches its half-way mark in 2016, the industry looks back at a rather slow box office while Hollywood movies stand tall after causing quite a stir in the domestic market during last six months.
The biggest example is "The Jungle Book", which created history of sorts at the Indian box office. The live action adaptation of the book of the same name, released on April 8, a week before its US premiere to avoid box office clash with Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan's "Fan".
As anticipated, "Fan" took a massive opening, the highest this year, at nearly 19 crore, clocking a whopping 52.35 crore in the weekend and opposed to this, "The Jungle Book" opened at 10 crores and registered a Rs 40 crore weekend.
The box office for both the films, however, completely changed later, with the 50-year-old "Dilwale" actor's film struggling to reach even 90 crores while the Disney project zoomed past the 100 crore mark.
By the end of its run, "Fan" made nearly 85 crores while "The Jungle Book" shattered all the previous records held by any Hollywood film released in India, earning approximately 183 crores.
This is the highest earning film of the year so far, beating Akshay Kumar's "Airlift" which is the biggest Bollywood hit of 2016 so far with 127 crore.
The margin between Bollywood's highest grosser of the year and "The Junglebook", that of nearly 60 crores, is alarming.
"The Jungle Book" is not the only Hollywood film which scored better at the domestic box office.
The comedy-superhero film "Deadpool", released alongside Katrina Kaif-starrer "Fitoor" on February 12, fared better. The Ryan Reynolds-starrer collected approximately 29 crores at the domestic box office while "Fitoor", helmed by "Kai Po Che" director Abhishek Kapoor, managed to collect a total of nearly 19 crore.
One of the most awaited superhero movies of the year, "Batman v Superman" opened to mixed reviews but managed to put up a total of Rs 36 crore in one week.
The Zack Snyder directed film clashed with John Abraham' "Rocky Handsome", and easily beat the latter.
Animated film "Kung Fu Panda 3" also clocked impressive collections despite facing competition from Kareena Kapoor Khan's "Ki & Ka".
The American-Chinese film raked in Rs 32 crore at the Indian box-office, which was just nearly 20 crore short of "Ki & Ka", which made Rs 51 crores.
A more prominent example of Hollywood films doing much better business than their Bollywood counterparts can be seen with the collections of "Captain America: Civil War".
The mega-budget superhero action movie clocked Rs 27 crore in the first weekend.
The film, which starred Chris Evans, Robert Downey Jr and Scarlett Johansson, was dubbed in Hindi where actor Varun Dhawan voiced the character of Captain America.
The movie registered a total collection of approximately 59 crore, which is more than Priyanka Chopra's "Jai Gangaajal", Emraan Hashmi's "Azhar" and even Amitabh Bachchan starrer "Wazir".
Not only this, the recently released "X-Men: Apocalypse" clashed with Aishwarya Rai Bachchan-starrer "Sarbjit" and had a better opening week than the biopic.The superhero film clocked Rs 26 crore in its first week while the Omung Kumar-directed movie made nearly Rs 22 crore.
The Friday of May 27 saw the release of three Bollywood films, "Phobia", "Veerappan" and "Waiting" and one Hollywood project, "The Angry Birds Movie".
The animated action-adventure comedy earned Rs 9.4 crore in the opening weekend, more than the combined weekend collection of the three Bollywood films.
Interestingly, almost all the Hollwyood films which did better business than Bollywood movies were either successful franchsie movies or big-budget superhero projects.
Hollywood movies, which did not boast massive CGI action pieces, managed to do decent business at the domestic market like Alejandro G Inarritu's "The Revenant".
Despite the Academy Award, the Leonardo DiCaprio-starrer earned a modest Rs 3.5 crore in its opening weekend in India.
There are still many Hollywood big-wigs releasing this year including "Conjuring 2: The Enfield Poltergeist", "Suicide Squad", "Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them" among others.
It remains to be seen how much will these films affect upcoming Bollywood movies.
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