Cocktail has ended up throwing a pleasant surprise for all involved. The film has fared beyond expectations (at least from opening perspective), and how! Even though it was always on the cards that the film would take a good start in the range of 60%-70% (as predicted in this column last week), the fact that it only showed escalation on Friday evening itself and grew further over rest of the weekend shows that the film was patronised by it's target audience.
With the weekend touching 36 crores mark, the film has now officially fetched Saif Ali Khan his biggest start ever. While it was always on the cards that the Agent Vinod opening of 30 crores would be definitely surpassed, the ease with which that happened (and that too with lesser screen count) has surprised many out there. There is a definite acceptance factor that has come in handy and though there are mixed opinions as well about certain portions of the film and certain critics have found the narrative a tad flawed, the feedback from audience has been better while ranging between above average to very good.
All of this means that drops over the weekdays won't be more than industry standard of 50% and the first week should be quite healthy (around 55 crores). Since there is no competition in week to come and multiplexes would continue to give good space to Cocktail, the film is now all set to be Saif's biggest grosser ever, hence comfortably crossing Love Aaj Kal total of 67 crores. In the process it would also wipe off a bad box office streak that Saif had suffered with Kurbaan, Aarakshan and Agent Vinod.
