'Bhool Bhulaiyaa 2' mints Rs 171.17 cr, shows Kartik Aaryan's growing might as star

Mumbai, June 13

'Bhool Bhulaiyaa 2' starring Kartik Aaryan, Tabu, Kiara Advani and Rajpal Yadav has emerged as a box office winner, raking in Rs 171.17 crore in India so far.

The film, which released on May 20, collected Rs 3.45 crore on its 24th day bailing Bollywood out of troubled waters as very few Hindi films have managed to put up good numbers on the box office in recent times except for the runaway success of 'The Kashmir Files'.

Senior film trade analyst Taran Adarsh on Monday shared the Kartik Aaryan-starrer film's collection in his tweet, "#BhoolBhulaiyaa2 continues to surprise [the industry] and silence [the detractors] with its super run, week after week... The excellent trending in Weekend 4 says it all... [Week 4] Fri 1.56 cr, Sat 3.01 cr, Sun 3.45 cr. Total: ? 171.17 cr. #India biz."

But, calling the film's success a surprise won't be right as the independent trade analyst Sumit Kadel furnishes different reasons behind the film's phenomenal success.

For starters as per Sumit, 'Bhool Bhulaiyaa 2' "is a well made horror-comedy". It belongs to the genre that has been gaining momentum and has amassed a considerable fan following in India given the unprecedented success of films like 'Stree' and 'Go Goa Gone'.

Sumit further shares that the audience has been craving for big screen entertainers like 'Bhool Bhulaiyaa 2' post the pandemic. Viewers are mostly interested in watching escapist cinema in theatres as "high on content films are getting bombed at the box office", as per him.

The legacy of its first part 'Bhool Bhulaiyaa' which came out in 2007, gave 'Bhool Bhulaiyaa 2' an early thrust akin to nitro boost on the box office race track.

And finally, Sumit credits Kartik's growing fandom and stardom behind the impressive performance of the film as he says, "Kartik Aaryan's stardom came into play. He is quite popular among youth and family audiences."

Youth because of films like 'Pyaar Ka Punchnama' and 'Sonu Ke Titu Ki Sweety', and family audience because of films like 'Luka Chuppi' and 'Pati Patni Aur Woh' remake.

While 'Bhool Bhulaiyaa 2' continues to grow, it has cut down the vital oxygen supply of the recent Akshay Kumar-starrer 'Samrat Prithviraj' as the latter has been washed off at the box office in front of 'Bhool Bhulaiyaa 2', trilingual film 'Major' and the Kamal Haasan-starrer pan-India film 'Vikram'.