Padmaavat, Sonu Ke Titu Ki Sweety, Pari: A look at films that made a mark in the first quarter of 2018

The first quarter of 2018 has come to an end, and thankfully it was not as awful as last year. Bollywood has delivered quite a few films worth celebrating. These movies not only became critic’s darling, but it impressed the people too. The fact that they got the cash registers ringing at the box office says it all. We had Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Padmaavat which, as we all know, was mired in controversies since its early stages due to misinformation campaign and rumour mongering. Fighting tooth-and-nail with the fringe groups that opposed the release, Padmaavat, which starred Deepika Padukone, Shahid Kapoor and Ranveer Singh released on January 25. It is these controversies that made everyone all the more curious about the film. And as a result many who wouldn’t have cared about the film otherwise also made their way to the theatres to watch what the fuss was all about. The positive word of mouth, especially all the praises for Ranveer got more people to the cinema halls and slowly, Padmaavat managed to earn more than Rs 300 crore at the domestic box office thereby becoming the highest grosser of 2018 till now.
A week after that came Akshay Kumar’s PadMan, which was inspired by the life of Arunachalam Muruganantham, a social activist from Tamil Nadu who introduced low-cost sanitary pads. Given the kind of buzz that was created, there were a lot of expectations, but neither the critics nor the masses were really impressed with the R Balki directorial. Earning Rs 82.10 crore at the Indian box office, this film is the third highest grosser of 2018.
This brings us to the second highest grossing film of the year so far, which surprisingly is Luv Ranjan’s Sonu Ke Titu Ki Sweety. We always think that only big stars get the money, but Kartik Aaryan, Nushrat Bharucha and Sunny Nijar proved it wrong with their work in the movie, which connected well with the masses, especially the youngsters. Believe it or not, but the film has made more than Rs 100 crore at the box office, Rs 106.77 crore to be specific. Who would have thought?