'The Dirty Picture' has performed beyond expectations and one can be sure that even the makers here would have been stumped with the kind of opening that the Vidya Balan starrer managed for itself. It was predicted last week that this Milan Luthria directed film would fetch 60%-70% footfalls on it's opening day. While this is how the box office behaved in the opening shows, occupancy increased to 80% odd (and at some places even 100%) by the time Friday came to a close. Saturday and Sunday showed further overall progression which resulted in the first weekend reading a healthy 30 crores.

While Vidya's bravura act is the talk of the town and so are Rajat Arora's dialogue and Milan's 'entertaining' direction, what definitely deserves a mention is the presence of a certain Emraan Hashmi. Even though in the film he has a lesser screen time than Vidya, the fact remains that Ekta Kapoor and Co. smartly marketed and promoted the film in such a manner that his loyal fan and followers base got mighty excited to check it out.

With a packaging like this which projected quite clearly that 'The Dirty Picture' belonged to the 'naughty' zone, it was obvious that Emraan was the best fit. This reflected in the opening as well, especially single screen theatres where Emraan's films are much awaited, and with Vidya turning on the oomph factor everything that came along was an added bonus.

The way 'The Dirty Picture' is going, one waits to see whether the film manages to touch 50 crores mark in it's first week. Though it would be a touch and go here, it is almost certain that Milan, Ekta, Emraan and Vidya would now have the biggest ever success to their name while leaving the 'Once Upon A Time In Mumbaai' total of 58 crores far behind. With 65 crores as a given for 'The Dirty Picture', it won't be surprising if it manages to cross the 70 crores mark since it has only 'Ladies v/s Ricky Behl' as the competition till the arrival of 'Don 2' on Christmas.

Another film that released alongside 'The Dirty Picture' was 'I Am Singh'. Initially one wondered whether the film would even manage a good release for itself. However going by the scale and non-existent starcast of the film, this Puneet Issar affair still managed a reasonably widespread arrival for itself. That was hardly something to cheer about though since the film opened to practically empty houses with hardly any positive reviews or good word of mouth coming it's way. With hardly any collections to cheer about, the film is an unmitigated disaster.