Queuing up: A theatre in Ranchi

Calcutta/Ranchi, Nov. 7: He’s back. And he is ready to shake, rather than stir, the box office.

Two years after the super successful Casino Royale, Daniel Craig’s James Bond is ready for his next assignment. Reason enough for Quantum of Solace to be the hottest release of the week.

In Jharkhand, it has already had a cracker of an opening. It’s on at Ranchi’s Eylex with four shows a day and at Sujata with a morning show. At Dhanbad, Bond is rocking the new plex, Fame.

In Patna, Bond is on view at Ashoka (four shows) and Regent (morning show), while in Calcutta the 22nd 007 flick is easily one of the biggest English-language film releases with 43 multiplex shows every day.

Deepak Choudhary, the manager of Eylex, said Friday morning showed the day. “For the first show (10.45 am), we sold almost 100 tickets for both gold and platinum seats,” he said proudly. “We are also doing advance booking for Saturday and Sunday.”

At Sujata, with over 1,000 seats in the hall, the morning show was 60 per cent full.

If the buzz around the film has been strong right from the day it premiered in London on October 29, then initial feedback from Ranchi is no different. “Daniel Craig’s stunts were marvellous … they are nothing like I have ever seen in other Bond movies,” said Manisha Kapoor, of St Xavier’s College, who had come with friends for the morning show at Eylex.

Sujata’s Chandramohan Jha seems to have recognised the trend: Quantum of Solace was likely to go down well with movie goers. And so he is stepping up publicity and pricing tickets innovatively. “We have a few row of seats going for Rs 15 each,” he said.

The mood in the camp of Sony Pictures India, the countrywide distributor of the film, is buoyant. Speaking from the Mumbai premiere of the film at PVR Juhu, marketing head Bhavesh Thakkar said on Thursday evening: “We are expecting a big opening after all the good reviews coming in.”

It won’t be easy for Quantum of Solace to match the box-office results of Casino Royale, which was the second largest English film grosser in India (around Rs 40 crore) after Titanic.

This weekend, Bond gets a virtual walkover from Bollywood with Sanjay Dutt’s EMI being the only new release. But Quantum of Solace will find a worthy foe in Karan Johar’s Dostana, next Friday. With Subhash Ghai’s Yuvvraaj arriving on November 21, the world's favourite spy may find it difficult to last six weeks at the box office like he had in the winter of ’06.

Exhibitor-distributor Arijit Dutta, a Bond freak himself, adds another rider: “The ground marketing hasn’t been enough for a film as big as this. Quantum of Solace has to be really good to pull through.” The distributor for Bihar and Jharkhand, Rajkumar Barolia, is keeping his fingers crossed.