Yash Chopra is finally having the last laugh. Or should I say multiplex owners are feeling sheepish as hell? Not only did they prove there’s no unity among them but they have also realised that they would have been the biggest fools had they not agreed to release Chopra’s Fanaa. The film has had the best opening in recent times, better than even Rakeysh Mehra’s Rang De Basanti (RDB). Released in January 2006, Rang De Basanti enjoyed the advantage of the Republic Day holiday.

No doubt Fanaa gained on account of the controversies it stoked before its release. Other than the spat between Yash Chopra and the multiplex owners, the film received publicity when it was boycotted in Gujarat, or rather when Aamir Khan was targeted in Narendra Modi’s state for his (Khan’s) support for activist Medha Patkar. But then, controversy doesn’t necessarily spell success.

Many years ago, Amrit Nahata’s (yours truly’s uncle) film Kissa Kursi Kaa turned out to be the most controversial film ever made in the history of Indian cinema. The film’s negative was burnt by the then ruling party minister and the film was re-shot. But when it was released, it also turned out to be the greatest disaster in probably not just Indian cinema but perhaps world celluloid history.

Therefore, all those who’d like to believe that it is just the controversy that is bringing in the crowds for the Aamir-Kajol starrer are as far removed from reality as Gopinath Munde’s statement on Rahul Mahajan is, that the late BJP leader’s son is a victim of a conspiracy.

Consider the figures for Fanaa: it yielded a distributor’s share of more than Rs 12 crore in India in the first week itself. The share is arrived at after deducting from gross collections, the entertainment tax paid to state governments, as well as the theatre rentals.

Add a couple of crore from the overseas circuit and you have approximately Rs 14 crore at the end of week one. The second week was super strong and its world business at the end of the first two weeks was an astounding Rs 24 crore, around Rs 6 crore more than its cost of production. And I am not even taking into account the revenues from the sale of music and electronic media rights. If all that is added, the film’s earnings in the first two weeks would not be less than Rs 34 crore to Rs 35 crore.

No amount of controversy can generate such revenue unless there is appreciation for the film. The runaway success of Fanaa has also broken the myth that in the Hindi film industry heroines cannot return to acting as leading ladies after marriage. They definitely can and how.

No doubt, there is a section of the audience that hasn’t liked the film, especially, the post-interval half. An emotional audience, the Indian public doesn’t change its opinion during a film’s second half unless it fails at the concept level, the way Yash Chopra’s Lamhe did.

It may be unbelievable but true that in the first two weeks, in several circuits, Fanaa surpassed the business of the entire run of Rang De Basanti. What has gone majorly in favour of Fanaa is that it has worked big-time in small centres too. Where RDB collected Rs 50,000, Fanaa managed to garner Rs 2,50,000.

For Yash Chopra, the revenue lost from Gujarat should be in the region of Rs 2 crore to Rs 2.5 crore. The film was released in Jamnagar on June 6 but one is not sure if the rest of Gujarat is likely to follow suit. Strangely, it is the intelligentsia of Gujarat that is against the release of the Aamir Khan film.

A lot of them feel the actor made a mistake by expressing his support more for Medha Patkar than for the rehabilitation of those displaced by the dam. Aamir Khan, meanwhile, is reported to have asked Yash Chopra to deduct Rs 2 crore from his remuneration as compensation for the producer’s loss in Gujarat.

It doesn’t require great intelligence to infer that Chopra will never do that. What Aamir should have done instead was to have offered Rs 2 crore from the profit of Fanaa to the dam displaced. Had he offered to do so, the Gujarat government would have had no face to obstruct the release of Fanaa in the state. There would have also been no demand for an apology from the star and, therefore, no question of refusing to apologise.

Meanwhile, the public had no love lost for Love Ke Chakkar Mein. The low-budget film sank ? and so did every rupee of its investment. As for the controversial and spooky Sacred Evil (Gehra Paani in Hindi, starring Kamal Hassan’s ex-wife Sarika), there was nothing sacred about its box office performance. The only thing that scared the makers was the poor attendance at cinema theatres.

Komal Nahta is editor of Film Information