The Conjuring: Last Rites tops Day 1 collections, surpasses Baaghi 4 and Madharasi

In a major shakedown the Indian box office witnessed a fierce five way battle between The Conjuring: Last Rites , Baaghi 4, Madhraasi, Ghaati, and The Bengal Files to get maximum audience with them. While expectations were high from the Bollywood to dominate the Hindi market and Southern offering dominating their respective states, it was the Hollywood horror flick which took away the maximum eyeballs. According to early estimates by Sacnilk, The Conjuring: Last Rites , the final installment of COnjuring series, collected a massive Rs 18 crore net on its opening day in India, clearly outpacing all domestic challengers. Among Indian releases, the Tamil action entertainer Madhraasi, starring Sivakarthikeyan posted the best numbers, bringing in Rs 13 crore net across all languages.The film marks a strong return for director A R Murgadoss whose last release was Salman Khan’s Sikandar. Though the film opened big but fizzled out very quickly. Tiger Shroff’s Baaghi 4 came next, earning Rs 12 crore net on Day 1 but one needs to note that the film had a ‘Buy One Get One’ offer , so one needs to take the final number with a pinch of salt.Today when there is no offer and being the last day of Ganpati festival, it would be interesting see how the shapes up from here after it got polarized reviews. Meanwhile other films Anushka Shetty’s Ghaati managed just Rs 2 crore while Vivek Agnihotri’s The Bengal Files earned just Rs 1.75 crore. It has been usually noticed that Vivek’s film shows a jump from second day onwards,it would seem only to wait to see if it holds true again like his other ‘Files’ movies. But for now it is The Conjuring which has captured the audience in a big way and it is goes to show the dominant power of Hollywood films who just this year has delivered three Rs 100 crore hits in Tom Cruise’s Mission Impossible: The Final Reckoning, Brat Pitt’s F1 and Scarlett Johansson's Jurassic Park: Rebirth.