A great recall value, thanks to its successful prequel that released seven years back, Welcome Back has been garnering a great response at the box office. The film, which has been working really well with the family audiences, had the second highest opening of the year as it brought in Rs 14.25 crore on Friday itself.
The film grew from strength to strength on Saturday and added another Rs 16.75 crore taking the two day total to a whopping Rs 31 crore. The two day total for the film is second only to Salman Khan's Bajrangi Bhaijaan. With the film's occupancy strong from the morning shows itself on Sunday, especially in core circuits, the film is expected to add in another Rs 18-19 crore on Sunday, unless there's a drop towards the evening.
Expected to bring in almost Rs 50 crore over the first weekend, the film's box office run looks promising. But everything depends on the collections during the weekdays. If there's no huge drop on Monday, the film is expected to easily sail into the hit zone and enter the 100 crore club soon.
While most trade analysts had predicted that Welcome Back might suffer a blow, due to the absence of the prequel's main star Akshay Kumar, the results have been surprising. Despite no Akshay, the film has been working stupendously well. At core, a healthy family film, a mad cap comic caper, Welcome Back's pulling in all the laughs as the makers are running to the bank. Also, this will help boost John Abraham's confidence at the ticket windows. Although he's replaced Akshay in the film, the collection of his one film alone this year has beaten the two day collections of all the three Akshay Kumar films that released this year.
Akshay's Baby opened around Rs 9 crore mark, Gabbar is Back had a Rs 13 crore opening and Brothers too had an opening around the same range as Gabbar. With Rs 31 crore already in the pocket, John-Anil-Nana's magic seems to have worked at the cash registers as well.
