US Box Office Report - Veeram overtakes Jilla

Veeram came up slightly ahead of Jilla in the US and Canada box office based on the collections from Thursday previews until Sunday. Veeram collected $190,000 (Rs. 1.16 Crores) from 65 locations while Jilla collected $180,000 (Rs. 1.10 Crores) from 61 screens.  Jilla had a slightly higher per screen average compared to Veeram.

Trend Reversal on Saturday 

Jilla was the clear favourite on day one as huge number of Tamil and Malayalam fans helped Jilla collect $62,600 while Veeram fell short with $55,300. The word of mouth has helped Veeram slowly inch ahead of Jilla on Saturday and raced ahead on Sunday.

No records broken for this Pongal

Even though the total tickets sold and revenue collected look promising when looked at in isolation. It is unfortunate to note that the collections have been lower than prior movies released in the past. Jilla has collected substantially lower than Thuppakki and Nanban while Veeram collected lesser than Mankatha and Arrambam. The box office numbers prove that majority of the audience have watched only one of the two movies. 

Veeram and Jilla no match to Mahesh Babu's Nenokkidane 

Both Veeram and Jilla had to compete for screens with other new Telugu releases in the US market. The bigger, better and more number of screens and shows were given for Nenokkidane and Yevadu. To put things in perspective, Mahesh Babu's Nenokkidane collected massive $980,000 (from 127 screens) while Ram Charan's Yevadu could collect $230,000 (71 screens).

Despite the fact that both the Telugu movies received less glowing reviews compared to Tamil movies, both Veeram and Jilla could only collect 1/5th of collections made by Mahesh Babu's Nenokkidane with only twice as much screen count. The reason quoted for such poor performance for Tamil movies is because of rampant piracy among our Tamil movie watching population in the US and erratically set higher ticket prices for Tamil movies.