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Bollywood Star Aishwarya Rai Discharged from Virus Ward

Bollywood actress Aishwarya Rai Bachchan. (AFP)
Bollywood actress Aishwarya Rai Bachchan. (AFP)
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Bollywood Star Aishwarya Rai Discharged from Virus Ward

Bollywood actress Aishwarya Rai Bachchan. (AFP)
Bollywood actress Aishwarya Rai Bachchan. (AFP)

Bollywood star and former Miss World Aishwarya Rai Bachchan and her daughter have been discharged from a Mumbai hospital where they were being treated for coronavirus, her actor husband Abhishek Bachchan said Monday.

The pair were admitted to hospital a week ago, several days after Abhishek and his superstar father Amitabh Bachchan, making the family the highest-profile people to contract the virus in India, which has recorded more than 1.4 million cases.

"Aishwarya and Aaradhya have thankfully tested negative and have been discharged from the hospital. They will now be at home," her husband tweeted, thanking fans for "continued prayers and good wishes".

"My father and I remain in hospital under the care of the medical staff," he added.

The actress and her eight-year-old daughter Aaradhya were initially quarantining at home before being moved to the same hospital where her 77-year-old father-in-law and his son are being treated for the illness.

She won the Miss World crown in 1994 and has since become one of the most famous faces in Bollywood and a regular on the red carpet at the Cannes Film Festival.

The elder Bachchan and 44-year-old Abhishek are both in the hospital's isolation ward.

No health update has been issued since they were admitted more than two weeks ago but Amitabh, an avid social media user, has been dispensing regular messages to his millions of fans on Twitter, Instagram and Tumblr.

A blog entry posted on Saturday touched on the mental trauma and stigma suffered by coronavirus patients, referring to "the stark reality that the COVID patient, put in hospitalized isolation, never gets to see another human".

Recovered patients "are afraid to be in public for fear or apprehension of being treated differently .. treated as one that has carried the disease .. a pariah syndrome .. driving them into deeper depression", he wrote.

The elder Bachchan, idolized in India and affectionately known as "Big B", has worked for more than half a century in the film industry.

He was voted "actor of the millennium" in a BBC online poll in 1999 and became the first Indian actor to be showcased at London's Madame Tussauds waxworks museum.

Mumbai, India's financial and film capital, has now recorded over 100,000 cases, with more than 6,000 deaths attributed to the virus.

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Entertainment

Mel Gibson’s ‘Flight Risk’ is No. 1 at Box Office, ‘The Brutalist’ Expands

FILE - Mel Gibson, right, interacts with crowd members as he leaves a Hollywood Walk of Fame star ceremony for actor Vince Vaughn, on Aug. 12, 2024, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Chris Pizzello, File)
FILE - Mel Gibson, right, interacts with crowd members as he leaves a Hollywood Walk of Fame star ceremony for actor Vince Vaughn, on Aug. 12, 2024, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Chris Pizzello, File)
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Mel Gibson’s ‘Flight Risk’ is No. 1 at Box Office, ‘The Brutalist’ Expands

FILE - Mel Gibson, right, interacts with crowd members as he leaves a Hollywood Walk of Fame star ceremony for actor Vince Vaughn, on Aug. 12, 2024, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Chris Pizzello, File)
FILE - Mel Gibson, right, interacts with crowd members as he leaves a Hollywood Walk of Fame star ceremony for actor Vince Vaughn, on Aug. 12, 2024, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Chris Pizzello, File)

Critics lambasted it and audiences didn’t grade it much better. But despite the turbulence, Mel Gibson’s “Flight Risk” managed to open No. 1 at the box office with a modest $12 million, according to studio estimates Sunday.
On a quiet weekend, even for the typically frigid movie-going month of January, the top spot went to the Lionsgate thriller starring Mark Wahlberg as a pilot flying an Air Marshal (Michelle Dockery) and fugitive (Topher Grace) across Alaska. But it wasn’t a particularly triumphant result for Gibson’s directorial follow-up to 2016’s “Hacksaw Ridge.” Reviews (21% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes) and audience scores (a “C” CinemaScore) were terrible.
President Donald Trump recently named Gibson a “special ambassador” to Hollywood, along with Jon Voight and Sylvester Stallone.
Going into the weekend, Hollywood’s attention was more focused on the Sundance Film Festival and on Thursday’s Oscar nominations, which were twice postponed by the wildfires in the Los Angeles region, The Associated Press reported.
The weekend was also a small test as to whether the once more common Oscar “bump” that can sometimes follow nominations still exists. Most contenders have by now completed the bulk of their theatrical runs and are more likely to see an uptick on VOD or streaming.
But the weekend’s most daring gambit was A24 pushing Brady Corbet’s “The Brutalist” a three–and-a-half-hour epic nominated for 10 Academy Awards, into wide release. Though some executives initially greeted “The Brutalist,” which is running with an intermission, as “un-distributable,” Corbet has said, A24 acquired the film out of the Venice Film Festival and it’s managed solid business, collecting $6 million in limited release.
In wide release, it earned $2.9 million — a far from blockbuster sum but the best weekend yet for “The Brutalist.”
The audience was downright miniscule for another best-picture nominee: RaMell Ross’ “Nickel Boys.” Innovatively shot almost entirely in first-person POV, the Amazon MGM Studios release gathered just $340,171 in 540 locations after expanding by 300 theaters.
Coming off one of the lowest Martin Luther King Jr. weekends in years, no new releases made a major impact.
Steven Soderbergh’s “Presence,” a well-reviewed horror film shot from the perspective of a ghost inside a suburban home, debuted with $3.4 million in 1,750 locations. The film, released by Neon and acquired out of last year’s Sundance, was made for just $2 million.
The top spots otherwise went to holdovers. The Walt Disney Co.’s “Mufasa: The Lion King,” in its sixth weekend of release, scored $8.7 million to hold second place. After starting slow, the Barry Jenkins-directed film has amassed $626.7 million globally.
“One of Them Days,” the Keke Palmer and SZA led comedy from Sony Pictures, held well in its second weekend, dropping just 32% with $8 million in ticket sales. In recent years, few comedies have found success on the big screen, but “One of Them Days” has proven an exception.