Fast & Furious 8 will release today post 3pm across the country and its a weird release as there is no holiday tomorrow except for Vaisakhi in Punjab and Haryana while Friday is a holiday across the country for Ambedkar Jayanti and Good Friday. Its a weird decision as although the UK release is on Wednesday, the US release is on Friday so its not as if a Wednesday release was a must in India. The Thursday evening option would have been best to take in the evening crowd as the next day is a holiday.

Fast & Furious is the biggest franchise in India from Hollywood along with Spiderman and the last film in the franchise grossed close to 100 crore nett. The last film also opened to 12 crore nett apprx and sustained very well, it still remains the biggest initial for a Hollywood film in India. Normally you would expect the next film to take a bigger opening but this release makes that impossible while the next day is a working day and then its the third day which is Friday and a holiday but the collections by then depend on the public reports which can go either way. 

Also a couple of months back we had the release of XXX - Return of Xander Cage with the same actor Vin Diesel and the same genre and it fared very poorly in India even though the film was promoted extensively due to the presence of Deepika Padukone but it was bit of a disater not just in india but also in its all important domestic market. The response in India to that film could have an affect on the Fast & Furious brand.

Despite the release being post 3 pm it has a huge number of shows with many multiplexes getting over 10 with the various formats and this will push collections even if occupancy is on lower side due to Wednesday release.  The Hindi competition will release on Friday with Begum Jaan but its unlikely that film can stand up to Fast & Furious 8 unless reports are very bad. The only plus of Begum Jaan is very low costs.