It is a surety for now. Neeraj Pandey has got his first critical and commercial flop with Aiyaary, the spy thriller starring Manoj Bajpayee and Sidharth Malhotra in the lead. After Special 26, this was his first movie that didn't star his close (and now estranged) friend, Akshay Kumar, and looks like the absence of his lucky charm affected the fortunes of his film (Akshay Kumar is not having a great run either, as his PadMan fails to make it to the Rs 100 crore club).

Aiyaary had a bad opening weekend with the movie not even crossing the Rs 15 crore barrier. Forget weekend, even after five days, the movie has failed to do that, collecting only Rs 13.19 crore in its five-day run. On Monday, it only managed to collect Rs 1.43 crore.  Here's what trade analyst Taran Adarsh has to say about Aiyaary's latest box office figures

On the other hand, Hollywood movie, Black Panther, has collected more than Rs 22 crore in the same amount of days, again showing the trend of superhero movies outshining its Bollywood Friday competitors. Even Padmaavat, now in its third week run had a slightly better Monday than Aiyaary.

Aiyaary also adds another number to the list of back to back flops that Sidharth Malhotra has been delivering. This also puts a question on his upcoming speculated movies like the Captain Vikram Batra biopic, Ek Villain 2 and the Kirrak Party remake.

Aiyaary also stars Rakul Preet, Naseeruddin Shah, Anupam Kher, Vikram Gokhale, Kumud Mishra and Adil Hussain. The movie has got unfavourable reviews and poor word of mouth publicity, with many criticising the confusing plot, lengthy screentime and average technical values of the movie.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Feb 20, 2018 07:12 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).