The Rising off to weak start overseas

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, 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, 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 and Toby Stephens, who rescues her from the sati pyre.