January has begun on a tepid note. While 'Wazir' has failed to live up to the expectations, surprisingly there are no other notable releases in the month for the first three weeks. 'Ghayal Once Again' was slated to arrive tomorrow but its sudden push to February has left the slot empty. This could as well have been picked by either Mastizaade or 'Kya Kool Hain Hum 3', had the slot been made available earlier. However, a last minute announcement from 'Ghayal Once Again' means that even that couldn't have been possible.

As a result, the only release of the week is 'Chalk N Duster', which has hardly been promoted. Moreover, the promo too is ordinary. The Shabana Azmi-Juhi Chawla film would see a restricted release in certain pockets of the country, and that's about it. All one can hope is critical acclaim to help some audience trickle in.

'Wazir' hasn't been able to sustain well during the weekdays, which means even though it would get maximum screens in the second week too, it won't account for much as the momentum hasn't been created. There would be some advantage for Bajirao Mastani to gain more moolah which would make it richer by a couple of crore or so. Dilwale is anyways collecting in lakhs (on a lower side) and that's about it.

This means that all hopes for a biggie in January 2016 lie with 'Airlift'. The film has been creating terrific buzz ever since its first teaser as launched, and has been on a positive path ever since then. The Akshay Kumar starrer has been promoted quite well too and has generated good all around vibe so far. The film is just one week away from release and it has been pitched well enough to generate some good footfalls on its release. While further trends around the opening would be clearer on 22nd January, the fact remains that it would take a bigger start than Baby which had released in the same weekend last year.

Joginder Tuteja tweets @tutejajoginder