No amount of support from a good section of media as well as industry insiders could save 'Shanghai' from seeing a premature end to it's run. The collections of this Dibakar Banerjee film did hold on to some extent over the weekdays but by no means were the numbers good enough to convince everyone from believing that here was a hit in the making. Resultantly, with around 18 crores coming in at the end of the first week, the film has turned out to be a barely coverage affair commercially.

Of course once the weekend collections started trickling in, the makers did come out full throttle and explained the cost v/s recovery. That was a fair decision on their part because without this, the perception about the film's acceptability would have gone further down. This doesn't mean that suddenly there was a newfound interest amongst the 'junta' for this film. In fact if that had to happen, the turnaround would have been much quicker, given the fact there was hardly any competition at multiplexes.

For Emraan Hashmi though it was important that the film at least manages to cover costs so that he can continue his box office run without any hindrance. To his credit, since the film is offbeat when compared to the kind of work he does, it didn't harm him commercially. In fact if 'Jannat 2' would have seen audience response like the way it has been for 'Shanghai', it would have acted as a severe blow to his plans. However with an experimental affair like 'Shanghai' that did rely on his name commercially but didn't quite centre on him thematically, Emraan has only managed one step ahead due to good critical acclaim.

The film though is on its way out, what with even 25 crores looking highly improbable. Though the collections are still much better than each of Dibakar's first three films (Khosla Ka Ghosla, Oye Lucky Lucky Oye, Love Sex aur Dhokha), one still expected better considering the hype surrounding it and the scale at which it was pitched.