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New Indian Express
10 hours ago
- Entertainment
- New Indian Express
Kajol-starrer 'Maa' collects over Rs 25 crore at box office in three days
NEW DELHI: Maa, a mythological horror film starring Kajol, has earned Rs 25.41 crore gross at the worldwide box office during its first weekend, the makers said on Monday. Directed by Vishal Furia, best known for Lapachhapi, Criminal Justice and Chhori, the film is written by Saiwyn Quadras. It released in theatres on June 27. Presented by Jio Studios and Devgn Films, the film is produced by Jyoti Deshpande and co-produced by Kumar Mangat Pathak. The makers shared the box office numbers on the X handle. "Mytho horror wins big. Total worldwide GBOC of 25.41 crore," read the text over the film's poster. The film opened with Rs 4.93 crore nett at the domestic box office and went on to collect Rs 6.26 crore nett and Rs 7.24 crore nett on the following days. The total domestic box office collection of Maa stands at Rs 18.43 crore nett. "When Mytho met Horror, the audience couldn't look away! #MaaTheFilm in cinemas now. Book your tickets here," read the caption of the post. The film narrates the story of a mother who becomes Goddess Kali to end a demonic curse rooted in fear, blood, and betrayal. It also stars Indraneil Sengupta, Kherin Sharma and Ronit Roy.
The Hindu
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Hindu
Kajol-starrer ‘Maa' collects ₹4.93 crore at box office
Maa, a mythological horror film featuring Kajol, has earned ₹4.93 crore nett on its opening day at the domestic box office, the makers announced on Saturday. Maa is written by Saiwyn Quadras and directed by Vishal Furia, known for Lapachhapi", Criminal Justice" and Chhori. It presented by Jio Studios and Devgn Films, and is produced by Jyoti Deshpande and co-produced by Kumar Mangat Pathak. The film released in theatres on Friday (June 27, 2025). The production banner shared the box office collection on its official X handle. The post featuring film's poster had "Fear Finds Faith 4.93 crore day 1 NBOC India" written over it. ALSO READ:Kajol clarifies Ramoji Film City comment: It's absolutely safe The caption read, "Your love has been unstoppable for this mytho-horror tale! #MaaTheFilm - in cinemas NOW." The film also stars Indraneil Sengupta, Kherin Sharma and Ronit Roy. It narrates the story of a mother who becomes Goddess Kali to end a demonic curse rooted in fear, blood, and betrayal.
NDTV
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- NDTV
Maa Review: Kajol Show All The Way But Film Falls Flat
New Delhi: Fronted solidly by Kajol in the guise of a woman who fights fiercely to prevent her daughter from falling prey to an old curse that hangs over the family and their village, Maa is a confused concoction. Faith, fear and feudalism flow into a feminine fable both fantastical and feeble. The mythological drama pans out in a remote Bengal village – its name is a Punjabified 'Chandarpur' and not 'Chandrapur' as it would be pronounced and spelled by a Bengali – off a forest that nobody dares to enter. Here, newly-pubescent girls disappear only to return within days without any recollection of what happened to them and where they went. That is pretty much the fate of Maa, helmed by Vishal Furia, whose fame rests on the 2016 Marathi horror flick Lapachhapi (remade in Hindi as Chhori by the director himself). It is way too erratic to be aware where it is going. Maa forgets what it wants to be – a straight up horror movie or a mish-mash of many things ranging from a good-versus-evil tale to a celebration of a benign, doting mother's power to be destructive when her child is threatened by a force she can barely comprehend. Forty years ago, twins, a male and a female, are born in an aristocratic home on the night of Kali Puja. The birth of the boy is greeted with joy all around. The girl is taken away and done to death under a massive banyan tree that is destined to become a key 'character' in the story and spread its tentacles way beyond the jungle. The killing of the girl unleashes a curse that casts a shadow on all young village girls on the cusp of adulthood. They are hounded by a daitya (demon), a personification of a fearsome giant tree that spreads terror around the zamindar's mansion that is now up for sale. The zamindar's son, Shuvankar (Indraneil Sengupta) – yes, the boy who is allowed to live and branch out – leaves home never to return. He hides his family's dark secret from his daughter Shweta (Kherin Sharma). Maa has more than its share of jump scares, especially in the first half, where dread and foreboding stalk Shuvankar and his wife Ambika (Kajol). The husband visits the village after a long absence when he receives news of his father's demise. He expresses a desire to sell the rajbari (manor). But he meets a grisly end before that comes to pass. The village headman Joydev (Ronit Roy) takes upon himself the responsibility of fulfilling the departed man's last wish. He locates a broker interested in the property and requests Ambika to come over and finalise the deal in person. Ambika and her daughter travel to Chandarpur. Before they can settle in and get a hang of the place, the duo runs into a chain of events that sends shockwaves through the mansion and befuddles the mother who knows just enough to be mindful of the dangers that lurk beyond the crumbling back façade of the manor. Religion and mythology play a key role in Maa. A Kali temple overlooks the courtyard of the mansion. We learn that the sanctum sanctorum has been shuttered for four decades. The longtime family factotum Bikash (Gopal Singh) informs Ambika that the shrine can be thrown only when somebody has a vision of the deity and earns the right to conduct Kali Puja rituals. While Bikash receives Ambika and Shweta with warmth and enthusiasm and his daughter Dipika (Roopkatha Chakraborty) quickly bonds with the city girl, his wife Nandini (Surjyasikha Das) views the inheritors of the property with suspicion. It becomes clear soon enough why she feels the way she does. Unlike many recent Hindi films of the genre, Furia's supernatural drama does not play horror for laughs. It cannot, however, prevent itself from straying into laughable terrain more often than is good for it. Maa is just too weird to be the patriarchy-busting fantasy that it aims to be. When the feudal seeks to suppress the feminine in a battle waged on the boundaries of superstition that often sinks into mumbo-jumbo, the film has a tough time holding its flights of excessive fancy together. The visual palette of the Saiwyn Quadras-scripted film is undeniably fascinating. The VFX, too, does its bit to spook the audience. Dimly lit interiors, discoloured walls and apparitions that watch from the shadows combine to create a few of the film's more chilling moments. But once the human and the divine begin to overlap and the fight between darkness and sanity assumes literal dimensions, the film falls flat. Maa, co-produced by Devgn Films, is a Kajol show all the way. But no matter what she brings to the table, consistency eludes the film as a result of a screenplay that could have done with more coherence. Ronit Roy has a meaty role that he does justice to. Kherin Sharma and Roopkatha Chakraborty, the two young actresses cast as girls tormented by the devil, are impressive. The themes that Maa tackles are untethered to the here and now, but it isn't the sort of mythological gender war drama that it aspires to be. It is way too unhinged to be earth-shatteringly terrifying. It flies in multiple directions and never finds a steady orbit. Only for Kajol fans.
Scroll.in
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- Scroll.in
‘Maa' review: A feeble and dull battle between mothers and monsters
Forty years ago, a girl was born in a landlord's family in Chandarpur village in Bengal. The girl was immediately sent to her death – the landlord was steeped in Kali worship and believed that the girl infant must be sacrificed if Kali's adversary, the demigod Raktabeej, was to be vanquished. In the present, the landlord's son Shubhankar (Indraneil Sengupta) has a mysterious accident while visiting his ancestral mansion. Shubhankar and his wife Ambika (Kajol) have avoided visiting Chandarpur for years. They especially don't want to take their 12-year-old daughter Shweta (Jherin Sharma) there. Yet, here is Ambika and Shweta in Chandarpur, fulfilling the first rule of the horror film formula: the lead characters will walk resolutely towards peril, ignoring every warning sign. Ambika finds herself battling a manifestation of a demonic force that has ghastly designs on Shweta and the other girls in the village. The problem with Maa isn't Ambika's unreasonable actions – irrationality is a cornerstone of horror. Rather, the trouble with Vishal Furia's movie is how literal-minded and feeble it turns out to be. For a film about a potent and fierce goddess, Maa is a resolutely tame affair. Like Ambika, Maa too in constantly looking for miracles – a tough ask, given Saiwyn Quadras's plodding screenplay, a barely scary monster created with pedestrian visual effects, and clumsy links between Ambika's maternal instincts and Kali's divine powers. Furia's previous three films – the Marathi-language Lapachhapi, its Hindi remake Chhorii and the sequel Chhorii 2 – have all been about women trying to protect their daughters from malevolent beings who represent the very real horror of patriarchy. Furia is admirably dedicated to making pure horror films rather than follow the trend of horror comedies. Maa is a poor showcase of Furia's feel for the genre. The film neither creates emotional engagement with its characters nor has the technical polish to be a convincing scare-fest. Except for a few scenes, there is a lack of atmospherics needed to carry off a tale of demonic possession. No heart beat is skipped when the monster, looking like a mean-tempered version of the tree spirits from the Lord of the Rings films, makes its appearance. Nor is the big revelation about the monster's human helper a real surprise. A haunted jungle that is right next to the mansion, separated by a crumbling wall or two? A concerned mother who drags her daughter to a place that has never been good to young girls? A Bengali pre-teen who has been raised in Kolkata but has no idea about the belief system in Kali? Maa isn't even trying. The 135-minute film gains some traction towards the climax, when Ambika channelises her inner goddess. A heavily made-up Kajol tries her best, but the battle was lost even before Ambika set foot in Chandarpur. Play
NDTV
15-06-2025
- Entertainment
- NDTV
Kajol Weighs In On 8-Hour Shift Debate: "Never Worked For 20-30 Hours, Producers Were Understanding"
Mumbai: Actor Kajol says maintaining work-life balance has always been a priority since she started acting in the 1990s and the journey became easier with the support of her family as well as the producers. "I was one of the few people who worked on one film at a time; I didn't do 4 films at the same time (like other actors). I used to finish one film, then start another. I didn't work for 20 or 30 hours. I was always very clear that we would work a certain amount only, and my mom also backed me up big time on it," the 50-year-old actor told PTI in an interview. Actor Deepika Padukone's alleged exit from Sandeep Reddy Vanga's Spirit after the two did not agree over an eight-hour working shift, among other conditions has sparked a discussion around shooting hours in the industry. Kajol, who next appears in horror thriller "Maa", said she had the same discussion after she gave birth to her first child, Nysa, with husband Ajav Devgn. "I remember having this discussion, and I think most producers are so (okay), they don't even think twice," the actor said. Sharing her past experiences, Kajol said whenever she faced challenges on the personal front, the producers of her movies were quite "understanding" and allowed her to leave the sets early when necessary. "I remember shooting for 'U Me Aur Hum' (2008), and my dad was in the hospital at that time, and Nysa was two years old, so it was a double whammy. But Ajay, being the producer, managed it; he worked around it to make sure that I went home early, so I could go to the hospital. So, we managed that work-life balance, as you put it. "Even when I was doing 'Fanaa' (2006), everybody worked around very comfortably without kind of making it an issue or even writing it in the contract, for that matter. So, I've had wonderful experiences. Most of the time, people do understand, and they work around you." Kajol has a slew of projects in the pipeline, beginning with "Maa", which is directed by Vishal Furia, who is known for his work on "Lapachhapi", "Criminal Justice" and "Chhorii". The movie narrates the story of a mother who becomes Goddess Kali to end a demonic curse rooted in fear, blood, and betrayal. Kajol said 'Maa', written by Saiwyn Quadras, started out as a thriller, and gradually transformed into a full-blown horror movie. 'When I agreed to do the film and heard the concept, I loved it. I'm a full mythological buff. I love our Indian mythology, we've amazing characters, stories, ideas and viewpoints, whether it is karma or dharma. "When they came to me, I thought it was very apt that this story is coming out at a time when they say that we are living in the Kalyug. The timing is perfect,' she added. Kajol said she is someone who doesn't lean towards horror films and credits Furia for convincing her to do the project. 'The scripts that I was approached with didn't have the right feel and vibe to it. Though I haven't read too many horror scripts, of the few that I have been offered, they have not been of the greatest calibre. "The horror films that were made earlier never concentrated on their script. It was about the supernatural element, blood, gore, how to scare people, etc was given more importance than the story and characters,' said the actor. 'Maa', which is slated to be released in cinema halls on June 27, is produced by Devgn. She said Devgn played a pivotal role in shaping up the story of 'Maa', and even shot some portions of the climax. 'He is a great producer. He is involved on the script level, VFX and the action. He did shoot parts of the climax as well,' Kajol said, adding, she has always had a great 'creative process' working with her actor-filmmaker husband. 'Maa' also stars Indraneil Sengupta, Kherin Sharma and Ronit Roy. It is presented by Jio Studios and Devgn Films, and is produced by Jyoti Deshpande and co-produced by Kumar Mangat Pathak. Besides "Maa", Kajol will also feature in action thriller "Maharagini" with Prabhudeva and Naserruddin Shah, Karan Johar's upcoming home production "Sarzameen", and season two of her series "The Trial". The actor working on back-to-back movies turned out to be an "interesting" experience. "I shot them back-to-back. I finished work on 'Sarzameen' and 'Maharagini'. Right now, the current thing is 'Maa' and then 'The Trial' season two. "I've been working for like 34 years now, and, I feel like in my 33rd year, I've worked more than I have in the last many years. So, it's been quite an interesting year," Kajol said. PTI KKP RB MAH RB RB
