Despite the hype and over a dozen theaters holding round-the-clock shows for most of Saturday and Sunday, The Rising could not raise a big battle cry in the overseas market which is crucial for this big budget movie.

Distributed by Yashraj Films, the Ketan Mehta-directed the film grossed a decent but unspectacular $531,000 in three days in the United States, while in the United Kingdom it grossed about $400,000.

 Mangal Pandey premiere

If the film follows the pattern of most of Hindi films which drop by about 50 percent each week, it could end up with about $2.2 million. And that leaves the Shah Rukh-starrer Paheli [Images], with a combined $2.5 million gross, to be the film to be beaten this year. But if The Rising follows the pattern of Black, which dropped by a small percentage each week and held well for six weeks, it could overtake Paheli. 

At a Times Square theater in New York on a Friday evening the audience applauded the film warmly but there were some who kept saying that though the film was visually strong and had a riveting performance by Aamir Khan [Images], without a heart felt romance and a stirring musical score (A.R. Rahman), the film had no repeat value. Others felt there was not enough chemistry between Amisha Patel [Images] and Toby Stephens, who rescues her from the sati pyre.