Box Office: Big B, Rishi Kapoor’s 102 Not Out takes decent opening, Omerta doesn't

Mumbai: With only 52 Fridays a year and the number of films produced by the Hindi film industry on the rise, clashes at the box office have become inevitable today.

However, while on one hand, there are clashes which would be talked about for months, like in the case of ‘Raees’ versus ‘Kaabil’ or ‘Ae Dil Hai Mushkil’ versus ‘Shivaay’, there are others which don’t make the same, or any noise at all. One such case was Amitabh Bachchan and Rishi Kapoor starrer ‘102 Not Out’ and Rajkummar Rao's ‘Omerta’ releasing together this Friday. The two films belong to extremely opposite genres, with the former a light-hearted tale of an elderly father-son duo and the latter, a dark biopic of terrorist Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, and the set of target audiences are obviously going to be different. And that’s perhaps why there is no competition or race between the teams as they might have achieved their desired number of screens.

As far as the collections are concerned, ‘102 Not Out’ has taken a decent start on Friday, with figures touching approximately Rs 3.52 crores. While the numbers aren’t extraordinary, the makers can be hopeful of a jump on Saturday and Sunday as the audiences, like the critics, are enjoying the film, something that was evident in the increasing response for the evening shows on Friday. ‘Omerta’, however didn’t have the best of starts, with collections around Rs 50 lakhs. The dark theme of the film and mixed reviews from critics make it a mammoth task to recover from the slow start. We’ll wait till the weekend to see if the film can spark a turnaround and if it can show growth like ‘102 Not Out.’