'No One Killed Jessica' has done well at the box office and as predicted in last week's column, it has broken the First Friday jinx. Though for years there hasn't been a single film which has been a success when released in the first Friday of the year, 'No One Killed Jessica' has turned around the fortunes.

The film managed around 13 crores in the first weekend itself, hence finding itself in a safe zone right away. Boasting of a kind of start which is on par with Rani's last biggie 'Dil Bole Hadippa' and better than Vidya Balan's previous release 'Ishqiya', 'No One Killed Jessica' has shown a constant rise at the box office. It was always going to be a 50% kind of opening for this 'fact and fiction' hybrid drama and this is how the box office behaved on the opening Friday as well with increase in occupancy with every passing day.

The other three releases of the week - 'Ashoka The Hero', 'Impatient Vivek' and 'Vikalp' - went totally unnoticed with 0%-5% collections. Each of these three films saw a poor release for themselves with odd theaters as well as show timings ruining whatever little chances that they had carried. 'Ashoka The Hero' was an animation film about which even the target audience, kids, were unaware of. 'Impatient Vivek' was a terrible film which was neither a comedy nor a drama and turned out to be an embarrassment of the highest degree. This was yet another downer for Sayali Bhagat.

As for 'Vikalp', it was the better of the three but an odd title coupled with zero promotion and a patchy second half meant that no one was really bothered to check it out. It would be a struggle for each of the three films to make any mark even on home video and satellite and would go down as the first three disasters of 2011.