After a string of socially relevant films, Akshay Kumar is back with a comedy and fans are waiting for it. He made his comeback to comedy with Priyadarshan’s ‘Bhoot Bangla’ and now the third installment of ‘Welcome’ is all set to release this Friday. As per the advance bookings, ‘Welcome To The Jungle’ is expected to have a better opening than ‘Bhoot Bangla’.Advance bookings for the film started off slow but picked up significantly closer to the release. According to Sacknilk, as of 2 pm on Thursday, less than a day before the film’s release, ‘Welcome to the Jungle’ has sold around 53,000 advance tickets on its opening day, taking the total collection to around Rs 1.26 crore. The film also saw encouraging sales for its paid previews and opening weekend shows. On BookMyShow, ticket sales continued at a rate of around 4,000 tickets per hour on Thursday afternoon, indicating growing interest among moviegoers.With this, one can expect more advance numbers in advance bookings till Thursday night, but basically, the picture will depend on spot bookings that come in after word of mouth when the reviews start on Friday morning. A opening day gross of over Rs 10 crore would be good for the film, and so are even the trade forecasts. Paid previews can contribute Rs 3 to 3.5 crore to the opening day numbers. But the film will finally be able to see a boost with positive reviews which should show in Saturday and Sunday numbers.Akshay Kumar’s previous release, ‘Bhoot Bangla’, opened to Rs 16 crore, including Rs 3.75 crore from paid previews. Going by current trends, ‘Welcome to the Jungle’ at least matches that image and is well positioned to potentially surpass it comfortably.The film also enjoys the benefit of a relatively messy release window. We have ‘Cocktail 2’ and Imtiaz Ali’s ‘My Vaps Aunga’ currently playing in the theaters and both may drop if ‘Welcome to the Jungle’ gets good reviews and gives them competition. As ‘Cocktail 2’ crossed Rs 100 crore worldwide on Thursday, one saw how the numbers of ‘Mey Vapas Aunga’ increased with positive word of mouth. Will these two movies survive the release of ‘Welcome to the Jungle’? Time will tell. But for now, the shows of these movies will definitely decrease as fresh Friday releases will get more windows.Directed as a madcap comedy adventure, ‘Welcome to the Jungle’ stars Akshay Kumar, Sunil Shetty, Raveena Tandon, Arshad WarsiParesh Rawal, Jackie Shroff, Tushar Kapoor, Jacqueline FernandezLara Dutta and Disha PataniAmong many others.
