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Hrithik Roshan may be down, but he's certainly not out. The failure of his last film, Sooraj R Barjatya's Main Prem Ki Diwani Hoon, does not seem to have made any dent in his popularity.
His next film, father Rakesh Roshan's Koi... Mil Gaya, also starring Preity Zinta, has met with overwhelming response at the box office in Mumbai and other Indian metros. The film is being publicised as India's first sci-fi film. Reports say it is a cross between Steven Spielberg's E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial and Tom Hanks' Forrest Gump. Koi... Mil Gaya releases on August 8.
All shows at Mumbai's Galaxy (of the G7 multiplex), Cinemax, Chitra, Starcity, Cinestar and Jaya theatres, where the film will screen, are booked through for Friday, Saturday and Sunday. "If it [the failure of MPKDH] had made any effect [in Hrithik's popularity], KMG would not have got the response it has got at the box office," says a theatre owner.
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G7 owner Manoj Desai says, "It has been an extraordinary opening for the first time after [Ashutosh Gowariker's] Lagaan. There were not less than 1,500 people at the theatre. We had to call the police to control the crowd."
According to one distributor, the owner of Delight cinema in Delhi had to cancel his matinee show because of the crowds outside his theatre for the advance booking of KMG.
In fact, Hrithik's Monday visit to New Delhi to promote KMG saw about 5,000 people thronging the Digital Talkies multiplex in Gurgaon -- this was the result of just a day's notice of the event.
Advance booking aside, KMG will definitely be an acid test for the actor who, for the first time, claims to have been completely honest to himself while playing the character of Rohit in the film. He says, "I tried to explore the child in me. That is where my learning of the character in the film came from."
With inputs from Vijay Singh in Mumbai.
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