'Jawan' could surpass 'Pathaan' opening day figures, eyes Rs 65-70 cr: experts
New Delhi (PTI): With a 5 am show in Kolkata, a 6 am one in Jaipur and tickets flying off the proverbial shelf, Shah Rukh Khan's latest "Jawan" is set to break the opening day figures of his own film "Pathaan" with insiders pegging day one earnings at Rs 65-70 crore.
"Jawan", a pan-India thriller that releases on Thursday, is off to a great start with 7.5 lakh tickets already being booked, online ticket booking platform BookMyShow said.
"Out of the 10 lakh capacity on opening day, we've sold about 25 per cent of the tickets, which is like 2.5 lakh tickets sold for Thursday across PVR INOX (screens). It is a very big number and early estimates suggest that it can be bigger than 'Pathaan'," PVR-INOX Ltd Executive Director Sanjeev Kumar Bijli told PTI.
"People are saying that this will be an opening day of Rs 65 to 70 crore, which is bigger than 'Pathaan'. The opening day figure for 'Pathaan' was Rs 55 crore. So hopefully it will be bigger than 'Pathaan'," he added.
"Pathaan" was a blockbuster, with reported earnings of Rs 1,050 crore. "Jawan", described by makers as a high-octane thriller outlining "the emotional journey of a man who is set to rectify the wrongs in the society", could outdo that.
Also starring Vijay Sethupathi and Nayanthara, the film, releasing in Hindi, Tamil and Telugu, premieres at a time Bollywood theatrical releases -- most recent being "Gadar 2" and "OMG 2" -- are raking it in.
Mumbai-based trade expert Komal Nahta agreed with Biji's estimate.
"The situation is crazy across single-screen theatres and multiplexes both. It is difficult to predict the business. It will at least do Rs 70 crore on day one (in India)," Nahta told PTI.
In Delhi, the film releases ahead of the G20 Summit on September 9-10 with several heads of state, including US President Joe Biden, set to attend the event. While the city will remain open during the weekend, restrictions will be imposed on a small part of the NDMC area.
Bijli said he is not worried about the theatrical business taking a hit in central Delhi because of G20 restrictions. It would mean four PVR theatres -- PVR Plaza, Rivoli, Odeon and ECX Chanakyapuri -- shut during the summit.
"They are single screen theatres with a total capacity of about 2,000 seats so that really wouldn't have much of an impact because the loss for that will be compensated by the fact that Delhi has a four-day weekend," he said.
About 30-35 per cent of the film's business will come from the South, which again is bigger than the numbers made by "Pathaan", added Bijli.
The buzz around "Jawan" is also high in south India as a majority of the cast and crew hail from the region, said Chennai-based trade analyst Ramesh Bala.
"Looking at the advance booking response for the film, I think on day one, the film should do Rs 20 to 25 crore from the South market, and overall, it should do Rs 70 to 75 crore across India. If the movie is reasonably good, then the lifetime business of the movie will be Rs 800 to Rs 1,000 crore," Bala told PTI.
It's not just in the South.
Theatre chain Miraj Cinema, which has 182 plus screens across India, said it has already sold 28,000 tickets.
"Due to overwhelming public demand, we've broken new ground by adding a 5 am show for a Hindi film in Kolkata, a first in our cinema's history. Jaipur will experience the earliest screening at 6.05 am in Hindi, setting a record for the city," Amit Sharma, MD of Miraj Entertainment Ltd, said in a statement.
Senior distributor and exhibitor Raj Bansal, said many theatres in Rajasthan will also hold early morning shows of "Jawan" due to the unprecedented response.
"After almost 30 years in Rajasthan, we are having 6 am shows," Bansal, director of Jaipur's three-screen multiplex Entertainment Paradise, told PTI.
In Mumbai, Gaiety-Galaxy, a prominent single-screen theatre, about 90 per cent of its seats are sold out.
"By Thursday, it will be houseful. We are happy with the golden run of movies in theatres, especially in single-screen theatres. I think because of Pathaan' and Gadar 2', the business in single screen has revived. The industry has bounced back in a big way. With Jawan' things are looking positive," Manoj Desai, executive director of Gaiety, Galaxy and Maratha Mandir Cinema, told PTI.
As screens open up for advance bookings in various cities, the Tamil and Telugu versions of the film are also seeing enthusiastic support although the Hindi version is naturally taking the lead, Ashish Saksena, COO - Cinemas, BookMyShow, said in a statement.
According to Bijli, 2023, particularly the months of July-August, have been great for the exhibition sector with the back-to-back successes of both Hollywood and Hindi movies such as "Mission Impossible 7", "Oppenheimer", "Gadar 2", "OMG 2" and "Dream Girl 2".
"Movie going (experience) has come back. 'Jawan' has a lot going for itself. The film has Shah Rukh Khan, who has delivered 'Pathaan', a Rs 525 crore movie," he said.
That film releases on Janmashtami, when many people celebrate the birth of Lord Krishna, and a weekend follows one day later is expected to boost sales.
Rajkot-based distributor Ajay Bagdai said the advance booking for "Jawan" looks promising as Gujarat will have a holiday weekend due to Janmashtami.
"At my theatre in Rajkot, we have 1,100 seats and so far we have sold about 750 tickets, only for September 7. On the first day, the pan-India business should be at least around Rs 50 to 60 crore," Bagdai added.
Vijay Dhar, the owner of Srinagar's INOX Cinema theatre, hopes "Jawan" is able to replicate the success of "Pathaan".
"We opened pre-booking two days ago. Thursday, Saturday and Sunday are completely booked. We have only kept two shows for Friday because of the prayers. 'Pathaan' did great business and we are expecting a similar response to Shah Rukh Khan's 'Jawan'," Dhar, a prominent educationist, told PTI.
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Trump faces his most difficult Iran war decision: Will he deploy US troops to seize uranium?
Washington (AP): President Donald Trump is facing perhaps the most daunting question of the war with Iran, one that could define his time in office: Will he put US troops on the ground in Iran to secure some 970 pounds of enriched uranium that Tehran could potentially use to build nuclear weapons?
Trump has offered shifting reasons for launching the war, but he has been consistent in articulating that a primary objective in joining Israel in the military action is ensuring that Iran will “never have a nuclear weapon”.
The president has been more circumspect about how far he's willing to go to follow through on his pledge to destroy Iran's weapons programme once and for all, including seizing or destroying the near-bomb-grade nuclear material that Iran possesses.
Much of it is believed to be buried under the rubble of a mountain facility pummelled in US bombings Trump ordered last June that he had claimed “obliterated” Tehran's nuclear programme.
It's a risky, complicated project that many nuclear experts say cannot be done without a sizable deployment of US troops into Iran, a dangerous and politically fraught operation for the Republican president, who has vowed not to entangle the US in the sort of extended and bloody Middle East conflicts that still loom large on America's psyche.
At the same time, lawmakers and experts remain concerned that if Iran hard-liners emerge from the fighting, they'll be more motivated than ever to build nuclear weapons as they look to deter the US and Israel from future military action, a dynamic that makes taking control of Iran's enriched uranium even more critical.
That stockpile could allow Iran to build as many as 10 nuclear bombs, should it decide to weaponise its programme.
Some lawmakers, like Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., say they remain deeply fearful that the president has put the nation on a path that will require putting troops inside Iran for what he called Trump's confused and chaotic objectives.
“Some of the objectives that he continues to espouse simply cannot be achieved without a physical presence there -- securing the uranium cannot be done without a physical presence," said Blumenthal, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee.
Meanwhile, Republican allies of Trump stress that there are plans in place to deal with the enriched uranium. Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman James Risch, R-Idaho, on Wednesday cited “a number of plans that have been put on the table”. He declined to elaborate.
Others acknowledged the complications of deploying troops into Iran.
“No one has given me a briefing on how you would do it without boots on the ground,” said Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee. “It doesn't mean you can't. But no one's ever briefed me about it.”
Scott added it's not tenable to allow the stockpile to remain: “I think it would be helpful to get rid of it.”
Trump and his advisers are rigidly obtuse
Nearly three weeks into a conflict that's left hundreds of people dead, tested longtime alliances and brought pain to the global economy, Trump and his top advisers have been rigidly obtuse about their deliberations over Iran's uranium stockpile.
“I'm not going to talk about that,” Trump said last week when asked about the enriched uranium. “But we have hit them harder than virtually any country in history has been hit, and we're not finished yet.”
Later that day, during an appearance in Kentucky, Trump appeared to claim the strikes had already neutralised the threat. “They don't have nuclear potential," he said.
Meanwhile, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told reporters earlier this week that the administration sees no point in telegraphing “what we're willing to do or how far we're willing to go" while asserting "we have options, for sure.”
Experts say it's doable but won't be easy
Richard Goldberg, who served as director for countering Iranian weapons of mass destruction for the National Security Council during Trump's first term, said that seizing or destroying the enriched uranium is certainly doable, if the president decides to go that route.
The US and Israeli forces have been making strides toward creating the conditions — namely, establishing total air superiority — that would allow for special operations forces operators, who are trained in blowing up centrifuges and dealing with nuclear material, to conduct such an operation if the president decides to go that route.
To be certain, a troops-on-the-ground effort is expected to be far more complicated than other recent high-profile, lightning-strike insertion operations, such as the January capture of Venezuela's Nicolás Maduro or the May 2011 killing of Osama bin Laden, Goldberg said. And the likely need to remove rubble to get to the canisters of enriched uranium adds another layer of complexity, because it would require heavy construction equipment.
"But if you actually own the airspace and you can have close air support and drones and everything else up in the sky for pretty wide perimeter, presumably you could do a lot,” said Goldberg, who is now a senior adviser at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a hawkish Washington think tank.
International Atomic Energy Agency chief Rafael Grossi told reporters in Washington this week that the assumption is much of the enriched uranium remains in the trio of Iranian nuclear sites bombarded last year by the US.
“The impression we have … is that it hasn't been moved,” said Grossi, adding that a bulk of the material is beneath the rubble at Iran's Isfahan facility while lesser amounts are at the Natanz and Fordow facilities that were destroyed in last year's American strikes.
Testifying before a Senate committee on Wednesday, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard in her prepared remarks said the US attacks on Iran had “obliterated” Iran's nuclear enrichment programme and buried underground facilities.
Gabbard said the US has been monitoring whether Iran's leaders will try to restart its nuclear programme but said that they have not tried to rebuild their nuclear enrichment capability. She added that the clerical authority overseeing Iranian government has been degraded in Israel's strikes on its leadership but remains intact.
Brandan Buck, a senior foreign policy fellow at the Cato Institute, said that an effort to extract or dilute the enriched material would likely take more than 1,000 troops at each Iranian site and would take time to complete.
On the other hand, not acting to secure the enriched uranium also comes with risk. Should Iran's hard-liners remain in power, and with enriched material, they will now have greater motivation to build a nuclear weapon.
“Trump has put himself between a rock and a hard place,” Buck said. “Throughout this, he has had maximalist aims, but he's wanted to maintain minimal effort in order to keep the costs low.”
