Allu Arjun’s Ala Vainkunthapurramuloo turned out to be the non-Baahubali industry hit in 2020. Bollywood filmmakers wanted to repeat its success in Hindi and decided to remake the film with Kartik Aaryan and Kriti Sanon as Shehzada.
The original producers, Haarika & Hassine Creations, joined hands with Allu Aravind and Bhushan Kumar to produce this remake.
But post-Covid, the scenario has changed. Remake films in Hindi have fallen like a pack of cards. Except for Drishyam 2, remakes like Jersey and Vikram Vedha turned out to be disasters. These films even failed to garner a decent opening at the box office.
It seems a similar fate is awaiting Shehzada, which is going to release on February 17. Despite a decent trailer and a couple of hit songs, the advance booking of the film is extremely poor. Only 10000+ tickets have been sold for the first weekend, which makes for around 35 Lakhs gross.
To put things in perspective, Kartik Aryan’s last film, Bhool Bhulaiyaa 2, sold around 1 lakh tickets before its release, which resulted in an opening of 14 crores on its first day. Marvel’s Antman And The Wasp Quantumania has taken a much better advance booking and will lead the box office this weekend.
If things don’t improve drastically in the next day or two, then Shehzada will struggle to open in double digits on its first day. Trade experts say the film might open in the range of 7-8 crores.
Bollywood was expecting that Shehzada would continue the momentum given by the huge success of Pathaan, but things don’t look too bright for Shehzada.
