King Khan reigned supreme last week when his Don crushed Jaan-E-Mann under its weight. Jaan-E-Mann, which was meant to give Don a run for its money, thanks to not one, but two big heroes, Salman Khan and Akshay Kumar, could barely make its presence felt. It suffered the dullness of the pre-Diwali and Diwali days and it wilted under the onslaught of Don. On the other hand, Don faced no such pre-Diwali or Diwali lull. In fact, it managed a bumper opening, riding on Shah Rukh Khan’s formidable star power and the fact that the movie is a remake of the 1970s blockbuster.

Of course, it helped that Shah Rukh and the makers of Don adopted a far more aggressive promotional strategy than did the makers of Jaan-E-Mann. In a way, the two heroes of Jaan-E-Mann underestimated the power and popularity of King Khan. Akshay was in any case peeved with the media because the latter projected the two movies as a sort of a war between the two Khans, almost ignoring Akshay’s presence in the film. Perhaps ‘Khan versus Khan’ or ‘Who is the bigger Khan?’ made better headlines for journalists. But Akshay is as big a star as Salman, perhaps bigger in the overseas circuit.

Anyway, despite poor public reports, Don managed to recover a good part of its cost in the initial days itself. With Jaan-E-Mann opening to dismal houses, it didn’t have any competition to speak of. The first day’s collections of Don were almost four times that of Jaan-E-Mann. After Diwali, on Saturday, collections of Jaan-E-Mann shot up, only to come down the following day. Attendance once again picked up on Eid. However, Don held sway for the first six days, reaping the benefits of Diwali, New Year as well as Eid. Unless the second week of Jaan-E-Mann is also reasonably good, its distributors would stand to lose heavily.

Take the case of the Mumbai distributor who acquired the rights for an unprecedented Rs 7 crore. If things don’t improve, he could end up losing Rs 3 crore. Of course, he would’ve lost more had he not disposed of the rights for the Gujarat sub-territory. As for the distributor who bought the Gujarat rights for over Rs 2 crore, he might end up losing half his investment.

The Delhi-U.P. distributor of Jaan-E-Mann must be thanking his stars. He paid Rs 3.5 crore for its rights but was lucky enough to recover almost the entire amount by re-selling the rights for Delhi city and Ghaziabad. Thus, whatever he earns from the rest of U.P. is his profit, but the Delhi distributor will be crying over his Diwali diwala, if things don’t improve.

Each of the two producers ended up spending approximately Rs 25 crore to Rs 30 crore in making their extravaganzas. But whereas Ritesh Sidhwani and Farhan Akhtar received a subsidy from the government of Malaysia where Don was extensively shot, Jaan-E-Mann was ‘subsidised’ by its over-enthusiastic distributors. If the disparity between the collections of the two films was wide in India, it was wider abroad. While Don raked in $8,04,388 in the opening weekend, Jaan-E-Mann managed a paltry $2,10,000. Similarly, the UK figure of Don of £2,85,000 was way ahead of the weekend collections of Jaan-E-Mann (£67,000). The scene in Australia was hardly any different. Farhan’s film grossed US $74,403 in the first three days, whereas Shirish Kunder’s debut directorial venture collected only US $14, 058 in the same period.

Believe it or not, but Hrithik Roshan has been offered Rs 30 crore for three films. No prizes for guessing who has made the offer. It is Adlabs which wants to rope in India’s first super hero for three films to be made in four-and-a-half years. If the deal goes through, the first film will be made after 18 months. And yes, the entire fee of Rs 30 crore will be paid when the actor signs on the dotted line. If that happens, Hrithik’s will be the highest remuneration ever paid to a Bollywood star.

Pity poor Kareena Kapoor. “There are no good stories in the market,” laments the actress. She adds, “I am hearing scripts every day but no story inspires me enough to sign a film.” And how did Kareena land the item dance in Don? “Farhan Akhtar and Shah Rukh Khan were keen that I do the dance. I couldn’t say no to them,” explains the gorgeous girl who is quite aware that the song as well as her dance have not been appreciated in the film.

Komal Nahta is editor, Film Information