It was predicted in last week's column that neither 'Haunted' nor 'Luv Ka The End' was expected to open over 30%-40% on it's opening day. To one's pleasant surprise though, 'Haunted' saw gradual progress with every passing show and ended up collecting around 50%-60% as its first weekend came to a close. In fact at number of centres, the collections were even more with 70%-80% occupancy on Sunday. All of this meant that the first weekend fetched a healthy 9 crores plus for the film which is now past the safety mark.

On the other hand 'Luv Ka The End' did even lesser than the low expectations that one had from it. It could barely recover from its 10%-20% opening and as word of mouth spread about it being a juvenile comedy that didn't even appeal to its target audience (teenagers), it was only further downhill for this Shraddha Kapoor starrer. With collections barely managing to reach 2.5 crores in the first weekend, it was crystal clear that 'Luv Ka The End' won't have much shelf life at the box office.

Though it was always expected that 'Haunted' would have a slight edge over 'Luv Ka The End', such huge variation wasn't really on the cards. Yet again box office played a game of unpredictability with an outsider like Vikram Bhatt managing to fetch far better results than a product that came from the biggest production of the Bollywood, Yash Raj. Though both films starred newcomers who had failed in their debut outing (Mahakshay in 'Jimmy', Shraddha in 'Teen Patti'), there was far better media coverage that 'Luv Ka The End' had fetched for itself.

However it was the audience inclination to watch a 3D horror film and that too under the directorial baton of Vikram Bhatt that did the trick. Once audience stepped in, the word of mouth was decent to good though critical appreciation for the film was mixed. On the other hand even though 'Luv Ka The End' faired slightly better when it came to reviews, it didn't translate into good collections at all.

Now that 'Haunted' has managed to take a better opening than Bhatt's last good success '1920', it has to be seen that how far does 'Haunted' go from this point on. The window for the film to play is small though since there are multiple releases threatening to occupy screen space in weeks to come. However if theatre owners decide to retain even 3-4 shows a week for it till the release of 'Ready' (3rd June), this Mahakshay-Tia starrer would manage to fetch itself the tag of being yet another good success of 2011 after another young affair F.A.L.T.U.