Akshay completes flop hat-trick!

Is Akshay Kumar losing his Midas touch? With his
latest release 8X10 TASVEER he has delivered a big turkey at the box office
third time in a row. His JUMBO and CHANDNI CHOWK TO CHINA had suffered a bad
fate at the box office recently and the dismal opening and pathetic opening
weekend collections suggest audience doesn’t seem to be very excited anymore
with an Akshay Kumar film. Akshay had genuinely tried to change tracks from
nonsensical comedies to more meaningful roles in serious cinema and his first
step towards it was his Nagesh Kukunoor film. But although Akshay has given it
his all to the film, Nagesh has let him down in the writing and direction
department. Even hardcore Akki fans have stayed away from this mind numbing
whodunit.

The film has been beaten at the box office in Mumbai by a Marathi film ME
SHIVAJI RAJE BHOSALE BOLTOY starring Sachin Khedekar in the lead role. Even the
Hollywood action thriller FAST AND FURIOUS 4 has taken a flying start at
multiplexes. TASVEER opened very poorly at single screens to 20-25% collections
and in multiplexes at 40% on Friday. The weekend instead of seeing a rise saw a
massive fall in collections. The Rs. 40 crore budgeted film has grossed a mere
Rs. 5 crore from its first three days. Which means it is next to impossible for
the film to recover anything beyond 10 crore in the long run. Considering it was
made at a budget of Rs. 40 crore and Rs. 6 crore more was added because of
publicity, the makers will lose a good Rs. 35-36 crore at least.

This is bad news for Akshay Kumar who was on his
steady way to super stardom challenging the domination of the King Khan. We just
hope he strikes back with vengeance. After all he has got four biggies lined up
for release in 2009 and luckily these films - BLUE, KAMBAKKT ISHQ, DE DHANA DHAN
and HOUSEFULL are all carrying sufficient hype along them.