Telugu Hit 'Sardaar Gabbar Singh' Cracks $1 Million In The U.S.

Pawan Kalyan in ‘Sardaar Gabbar Singh’ (Photo courtesy of Eros International)

Telugu action movie Sardaar Gabbar Singh, which stars Pawan Kalyan as a maverick cop and Kajal Aggarwal as a princess, has raked in a tad more than $1 million in its first three days on 160 screens in the U.S, despite a sharp drop in takings on Saturday and Sunday.

That total, which includes Thursday night previews, continues a hot streak for Telugu films in the U.S., where Oopiri, Vamsi Paidipally’s remake of French blockbuster The Intouchables starring Nagarjuna, Karthi, Tamannaah and Prakash Ra, has amassed $1.5 million after its third weekend.

Directed by KS Ravindranath (Bobby) and released by Eros International in association with Pawan Kalyan Creative Works and Northstar Entertainment, Sardaar Gabbar Singh opened strongly in 42 territories last weekend but takings have since plummeted, perhaps affected by adverse reviews or word of mouth. In its first three days in India the actioner took an estimated 41.4 crore ($6.2 million), performing well in the Telugu states while the Hindi version fared poorly in northern India. Kalyan plays the gun-toting Gabbar Singh, who is posted to the fictional border town of Rattanpur where he clashes with the villainous Bhairav Singh (Sharad Kelkar), who tortures the villagers and intends to seize their land for mining. Aggarwal plays the princess, the only heir to the fading royal family who is Gabbar’s love interest.

Jon Favreau’s live action The Jungle Book was the stand-out title in India last weekend ,  grossing 55.6 crore ($8.3 million) on 1,600 screens, even higher than the Walt Disney DIS -0.16% studio’s initial projections.  The Hindi version features the voices of Priyanka Chopra as python Kaa, Irrfan as friendly bear Baloo, Nana Patekar as Bengal tiger Shere Khan, Shefali Shah as the wolf Raksha and Om Puri as black panther Bagheera.

Commenting on the weekend results, PVR Cinemas CEO Kamal Gianchandani told Forbes, “The Jungle Book has exceeded all expectations; the numbers were always expected to be strong but the actual results are far better than the expectations. It is a blockbuster in all versions. With the way it’s going, it’s tough to put a final number to its box office run. Sardaar Gabbar Singh is a runaway hit in its original version, however, the dubbed Hindi version results were expected to be much better than they are.”

Also launched in India last weekend, writer-director Vikram Bhatt’s erotic thriller Love Games did not live up to the pre-release hype and controversy over the raunchy scenes and explicit language. The saga of a happily married couple in Delhi who indulge their sexual fantasies with threesomes, starring Patralekha, model-turned-actor Gaurav Arora and Tara Alisha Berry,  it earned a measly 3.06 crore ($460,000).

Scathing reviews may have deterred some cinemagoers. IBN Live’s Kriti Tulsiani declared, “Love Games is no game at all. Not fun, not entertaining but yes, it definitely has all the elements it promised to offer – sex, suspense, thrill, obsession, blackmailing and much more… It seems Bhatt’s signature plot is pretty much a staple for him now. While it might have worked for him in Murder, it surely fails to do wonders this time and end up making you laugh with disbelief that what you just saw was actually shown.”

The Hindustan Times’ Rohit Vats opined, “Newcomer Gaurav Arora looks confident and has shown some potential, but it’s very difficult for anybody to stand out in a film meant to explore the uncontrollable sexual urge of its heroine. Patralekha is the highlight of Love Games. She did a good job in Hansal Mehta’s CityLights, but this role demanded a certain kind of language and body movements from her. She obliges. Patralekha tries her best to hold everything together, but she is all alone in her pursuit.”

In The Indian Express EXPR -0.15% Shubhra Gupta  observed the producers’ “long-standing promise of giving us fully adult men and women bursting with carnal desires and twisted motives used to be backed by storylines. This one gives up quickly. All sorts of things crop up—blood, bodies, guns, murder, and dollops of confusion wrapped in eye-popping improbability.”