‘Vikrant Rona’ Overpowers ‘Ek Villain Returns’ Collections

Indian filmmaker Mohit Suri returned with the sequel to his film Ek Villain last month and the new film Ek Villain Returns released in theatres on July 29. The film, starring Tara Sutaria, Disha Patani, Arjun Kapoor and John Abraham in lead roles, has managed to earn a meagre $4.14 million.

The film has collected $3.8 million in India in ten days while the worldwide collections stood at $4.14 million. Sudeep’s Vikrant Rona also released on the same day and the Kannada film fared much better at the ticket windows.

According to the producers, Ek Villain Returns made $3.01 million in the first week in India. The film is a sequel to Suri’s 2014 film Ek Villain which featured Riteish Deshmukh and Sidharth Malhotra alongside Aamna Sharif and Shraddha Kapoor in lead roles. Coming six years after the first one, the new film make visible attempts to appear woke, but does not always succeed. A thriller that keeps the audience hooked on, wondering who is the real villain, Ek Villain Returns relies a lot on cliché and stereotypes.

The film made an opening collection of $0.88 million on July 29 and the collections soared slightly over the first weekend, making a total of $2.9 million in first three days of the release. The numbers took a dip over the weekdays and the film could not even total $6 million in a week.

Meanwhile, Vikrant Rona has earned $18.8 million worldwide while the Hindi version of the film alone bagged $1.05 million in the domestic market. Directed by Anup Bhandari, the film released in Kannada, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam and Hindi.

Vikrant Rona also stars Nirup Bhandari, Neetha Ashok and Jacqueline Fernandez. It is produced by Jack Manjunath under his production Shalini Artss, co-produced by Alankar Pandian of Invenio Origins, and is backed by Zee Studios.

While the Hindi film did not meet trade expectations, content-wise both films (that released across Indian theatres last week) were thrillers relying heavily on cheesy dialogues, stereotyping characters. Both protagonists even had similar company.