Much as a lobby in media papers and some affiliated portals have been reporting bloated figures and occupancies for I Hate Luv Storys as a commercial grosser, comparing it to All India hits like Ajab Prem Ki Ghajab Kahani and what not, the reality on the ground is much different, even at the multiplexes. The Karan Johar film featuring Imran Khan-Sonam Kapoor has lower figures and occupancies than even last month's disaster Raavan in India (Abhishek Bachchan-Aishwarya Rai), and less than Kites (Hrithik Roshan-Barbara Mori), which too was a disaster, and quite a lot worse than Prakash Jha's Rajneeti which was a hit.
Even in overseas in North America where it released mid-week Wednesday itself looking to capitalize on 4th July holiday coming up there, IHLS the film's collections were not upto expectation given it's a Karan Johar production, collecting a subpar 375K over the 3 day weekend and 535k over the extended 6 day wednesday-monday period there. Raavan which was a disaster overseas also 2 weeks before fetched $482k over its 3 day opening weekend despite opening below expectations and crashing on Sunday. Rajneeti earlier in June did $850k in USA for its 3 day weekend despite supposedly being an Indian interiors themed film.
In India, contrary to opening average of 80-90% claims across all multiplexes last Friday for IHLS, the multiplex opening average for this 'youth-centric' fare was actually closer to 40%-50% opening average with single screens much much lower. And by Wednesday, with possible exception of Delhi metro, the same multiplexes were drawing hardly 10-20 people for this 'multiplex hit'. This can be verified by visiting a multiplex like Cinemax in Andheri in Mumbai or Fame in Highland park in Calcutta. Coming up 2nd weekend too is equally shaky. The multiplexes have been asked to allocate large number of screenings again but the actual advance bookings are sad. Not even 1% in some cases.
The collections are barely over 26-27 crores (even less according to some distributors) with occupancies worse than the flops of recent past.
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