By Monday night the verdict was out. Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Saawariya lost the box-office battle to the SRK blockbuster Om Shanti Om (OSO). It was easy to compare the performance of the two competitors by driving around south Mumbai’s multiplexes on Monday night. There were no tickets for OSO available at INOX or Sterling for the late night show. At Metro Adlabs, we grabbed two of the last four. Saawariya was available everywhere.

“OSO had about 90 per cent occupancy in theatres, while Saawariya was in the 60 per cent range over the three-day weekend,” says Vinod Mirani, former editor of trade magazine Box Office. He also claims that cinema theatres were pulling out Saawariya and replacing it with Jab We Met, which has grown with word of mouth. This was denied by a spokesperson of Saawariya’s producer, Sony Pictures Releasing (SPRI).

The revenue figures for the two films tell an interesting tale. Eros International, distributors for OSO, claimed a weekend collection of $17 million (Rs 68 crore) from 1,500 screens worldwide, while Saawariya did around $15.4 million (Rs 61 crore) from 13 markets and 899 screens. Significantly, both Hindi films outran Hollywood’s biggest release of the week, the Tom Cruise movie Lions for Lambs, which earned a poor $10.3 million (Rs 41.2 crore) from 2,675 screens worldwide. The marketing blitz obviously worked for the Bollywood movies, but OSO prevails with no other big release anticipated in the next week.