Merry Christmas box office prediction day 1: Movie set for modest start, word-of-mouth crucial, say

Sriram Raghavan’s thriller Merry Christmas, starring Vijay Sethupathi and Katrina Kaif, is set to hit the theatres on January 12. The interesting thing about the Vijay Sethupathi-Katrina starrer is that it’s a bilingual film. It was shot in Hindi and Tamil separately and will release in both versions all over the country on Friday.

How will Merry Christmas perform at the box office?

While Vijay Sethupathi has been a major film star in Tamil cinema, he is a relatively newer presence in Bollywood. And even though Katrina Kaif’s presence is expected to help the film’s chances at the box office, it remains to be seen what lies in the future for Merry Christmas at the box office. Republic spoke to some of the leading trade analysts to weigh in on the same.

Trade expert Sumit Kadel believes that Merry Christmas would approximately earn ₹1.5 to ₹2.5 crore nett in Hindi, and ₹1.5-₹2 crore in Tamil. Kadel added, “It would be a decent total for the kind of star cast the film is having.”

How will the threeway clash with Captain Miller and Ayalaan impact Merry Christmas?

Sumit Kadel also informed that Merry Christmas will be impacted in terms of screen count, because of competition from films like Captain Miller, which would get approximately 50 to 60 percent of the shows across multiplex and single screens, and Ayalaan which will get 30 to 40 percent. Kadel added, “If both Captain Miller and Ayalaan get good responses, then it will eat substantial business of Merry Christmas in Tamil language.”

Meanwhile, trade analyst Ramesh Bala believes that while Merry Christmas might open low, it has a good chance of picking up over the weekend and later on if there is good word of mouth.

Bala adds, “Merry Christmas will be impacted by the film’s genre as well as its lead cast. It is not an action movie, and Vijay Sethupathi too has never played a hero in Hindi films before. It might gain traction only after good reviews.”

Merry Christmas is estimatedly made on a budget of Rs. 60 crore, so it remains to be seen whether the film will come any close to recovering its costs from theatrical revenue.