It has been an unprecedented run for Bollywood this season. Since Independence Day, there have been five films released just over four Fridays and all of these have been huge successes. Their combined collections have been to the tune of Rs 700 crore already, which has never happened before.

These films are Mission Mangal, Batla House, Saaho, Chhichhore and Dream Girl. While Mission Mangal and Batla House came together on the Independence Day weekend, Saaho came after a couple of weeks. A week later, Chhichhore released and then soon after arrived Dream Girl. What transpired in theatres though was extraordinary as audiences continued to flock theatres week after week.

The whole logic of ‘how can you expect a family of four to spend money on tickets and popcorn week after week’ vanished in thin air as audiences across A, B and C centres and that too in multiplexes, as well as single screens, didn’t mind giving each of these five films a dekho.

While Balki and Jagan Shakti’s Mission Mangal emerged as a blockbuster with collections going past the Rs 200 crore mark, Nikkhil Advani’s Batla House stopped just a few lakh short of the Rs 100 crore mark. Sujeeth’s Saaho may have flopped down south but in the Hindi version, it has accumulated around Rs 50 crore.

While these were biggies that were anyways expected to be huge, what emerged as a pleasant surprise was Sajid Nadiadwala and Nitesh Tiwari’s Chhichhore, which grew huge after a decent start and is today aiming for the Rs 150 crore club. On the other hand, Ekta Kapoor and debutant director Raaj Shaandilyaa’s Dream Girl has enjoyed a dream run with by finding a slot in the Rs 100 crore club with effortless ease.

Of course, there have been intermittent disappointments too. It was a Black Friday just a week back when The Zoya Factor, Pal Pal Dil Ke Paas and Prassthanam failed to have combined lifetime collections of even Rs 20 crore between them. That did put three huge red dots in Bollywood scorecard for this season. However, there are excellent days expected ahead all over again with Hrithik Roshan and Tiger Shroff bringing on War. The Gandhi Jayanti release is super hot and bets are already being placed for the film to open anywhere between Rs 40 to Rs 50 crore range on its mid-week release.

Nonetheless, 2019 has turned out to be a largely good year so far and with some of the biggest films still waiting to release in the coming quarter, it is expected that the industry would be richer by a few hundred crores more before the New Year strikes.