Over the last 72 hours, Ranbir Kapoor has conquered the box office beyond anyone’s wildest expectations. While the trade was expecting Karan Johar’s Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani to open big, the actual collections have been simply mind-boggling. On Friday, the film took a cool Rs 19 crore plus opening; making it the second-highest, non-holiday opener, just behind Dabangg 2. The film received positive reviews and a largely encouraging word of mouth response. But large sections of the trade expected a slight drop on Saturday, as is the case with many big films. But YJHD went against the trend and showed healthy growth on Saturday by collecting more than Rs 20 crore. On Sunday the film added more steam to its victorious run and raked in even bigger numbers (approx Rs 23 crore), making it the first film in the history of Bollywood to have touched the Rs 60 crore mark in its opening weekend in India alone.

This puts YJHD’s weekend numbers above Ek Tha Tiger, Dabangg 2, RaOne, Bodyguard and several other biggies that have made it to the 100-crore-club in the last few years.With the film connecting with the youth in a big way, the trade expects the momentum to continue over the weekdays too and even though YJHD faces competition from a well-promoted Yamla Pagla Deewana 2 (next week), the hundred-crore-mark now seems to be just a formality for this romcom. Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani has also done very overseas and has cemented the award-winning 'Rockstar's' position as a salable solo-hero. As of now, YJHD has beaten all other 2013 releases by a neat margin.