Gully Boy has seen a good advance with collections set to reach 7-7.5 crore nett pre release at the end of business today for the four day weekend. Its not a huge advance but good for this film. It is regional specific with Mumbai city and Bangalore seeing a very strong advance along with Pune. The other two big metros Delhi city and Kolkata should end up with good results by the time the advance finishes tonight. 

The huge plus for the film is its Valentines Day on Thursday which gives collections a 30-40% boost and this film is a youth film with stars popular among the youth. It is this audience that propels the Valentines Day collections.  The film will surprise if it finds any appreciation in the core Hindi belts but if the five metros really take to the film then these also can give a big enough number. The biggest film of these lot is Barfi! in 2012 which got 1.2 crore footfalls and that today for a metro film with all the tax changes and rises in ticket pricing that many footfalls can give a big NETT number. 

The director belongs to that brigade of directors like Imtiaz Ali, Anurag Kashyap, Vishal Bhardwaj etc that has the European style of story telling which limits the reach of the film. Most of these directors have faded as the younger stars have slowly started to find out that they cant deliver the sort of HITS they need. The director of Gully Boy Zoya Akhtar has been luckier that after a dud start with Luck By Chance got a Hrithik Roshan / Katrina Kaif at their peak with Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara(2011)  but could only deliver 90 crore nett when these stars should have done 125 crore nett eyes closed at that time.

Then the ensemble Dil Dhadakne Do did even less in 2015 and now again has got lucky this time with Ranveer Singh / Alia Bhatt at the right time. A Ranveer Singh / Alia Bhatt today is probably not at the level of Hrithik Roshan / Katrina Kaif in 2012 but its a huge cast for a director who has not delivered a film which has been appreciated across India. The better casts could be coming as Zoya Akhtar is an industry product while the other directors in this brigade are outsiders. She is basically the last one of this brigade standing today thanks to the stars and lets see if this status remains in a week or so. If a film can today can reach a larger audience then even huge numbers are even possible with non star films as can be seen with Uri - The Surgical Strike. This started as a metro film but then spanned its wings to even score in Bihar. it will be a very interesting week at the box office.

The last article and others on this brigade of directors can be seen here