The Jungle has become rich! Disney’s Mowgli adventure has earned Rs 401.9 million in just three days of its opening in India. This makes it the second highest opener for a Hollywood film in India after 2015’s Furious 7 which collected around Rs 480 million in its opening weekend.
The Jungle Book that opened on 8 April, 2016 collected Rs 100.9 million at the Indian box office on the first day which served as a whopping opening for Disney’s live action CG feature. The timing seemed to work in Disney’s favour as Friday turned out to be a holiday for Indian folks on account of the festival of Gudi Padwa, which channelised folks to entertain themselves in the theatres.
The collection took an uphill as the film collected Rs 135 million on Saturday. Thus, in the first two days itself, the film collected around Rs 235.9 million. Well, Sunday came in as a power booster, as the film garnered Rs 166 million thus marking the record of the highest single day collection for a Hollywood film in this country.
The Jungle Book has been released in India in Hindi, English, Tamil and Telugu across 1,500 to 1,700 screens in India. And, it has been released in India one week prior the US release mainly because the story resonates with the Indian folks. In fact, even the lead character or the sole human character in the film Mowgli is played by an Indian American boy named Neel Sethi.
The Hindi version of the film received a huge applause in India mainly due to its star voice cast: Nana Patekar voicing Shere Khan, Om Puri as Bagheera, Irrfan Khan as Baloo, Shefali Shah as Raksha and Priyanka Chopra as the serpent Kaa. The thrilling voice of the legendary Nana Patekar and Om Puri enthralled the audience and drew Indian folks to the theatre without a second thought.
The English version of the film, which has contributed around 48 per cent to the box office collection in India, primarily attracted the young audience of the Indian population. The voice cast for the English version included big names like Idris Elba, Ben Kingsley, Bill Murray, Scarlett Johansson, Christopher Walken, Ben Kingsley and Lupita Nyong’o.
Directed by John Favreau based on Rudyard Kipling’s book of the same name, The Jungle Book film produced by Disney has attracted eyes to the cinema houses due to the legacy that the name carries. The tale of Mowgli has been a predominant story in the minds of Indian kids and therefore when this feature came out, the box office was bound to be toppled with huge numbers. To add to the ripple, the film is created by Disney which again has a huge stance in the animation and storytelling world due to its phenomenal ventures. So, the traction that the film has gained can be summarised in just one line- ‘It’s all in the name’.
The basic fact that this story is quite Indian and has been released in India beforehand justifies the box office collection. Even though this movie has faced a tough competition by DreamWorks’ Kung Fu Panda 3 which is still running in the theatres, The Jungle Book has outdone the animated feature by a huge margin as the panda feature earned only Rs 100 million in the first three days of its release. And the fact that Disney’s creation still has a long way in theatres indicates that the jungle adventure is going to get even richer!
