Remo-Prabhu's ABCD - ANYBODY CAN DANCE stuns Akshay Kumar's SPECIAL 26, RACE 2 a hit

Box-office is capable of stunning even the biggest names, and this week witnessed the same phenomenon as Remo D'Souza's ABCD-ANYBODY CAN DANCE (with Prabhudheva being the only known name) establishing a substantial lead over Neeraj Pandey's Akshay Kumar, Manoj Bajpai, Anupam Kher and Kajal Aggarwal starrer SPECIAL 26, during the earlier screenings.

While SPECIAL 26 was not expected to open like a HOUSEFULL 2 or a ROWDY RATHORE (considering it's genre), and a sedate start was on the cards, still the 35-55 percent opening (on an average) was way below the 60-80 percent start that ABCD embarked upon. The phenomenon was not restricted to one or two circuits but all over India.

The irony is that most Akshay Kumar starrers get a low rating from the critics but end up being big hits. This time though the critics have loved the film and given it very high ratings (a rare phenomenon for an Akki starrer!), but it seems that the audience have not.

Having said that the latter shows have seen SPECIAL 26 reducing the gap and picking up quite well while ABCD has seen a noticeable fall in collections. Both the films are expected to fare very well during the weekend.

Meanwhile last Friday's Kamal Haasan project, VISHWAROOP (VISHWAROOPAM), did not get much benefit from the controversies surrounding it (as is the norm) and netted around 11.50 crore during the first week.

And before we leave, we have the year's first clear hit in Abbas-Mustan's RACE 2. During the second week, the Anil, Saif, John, Deepika and Jacqueline starrer has added another 21-22 crore and has thus netted about 90 crore (to be validated) in two weeks from India. The film has also done quite well in the overseas.