KKL in the newsweek with box office repor

its even made its way to the newsweek

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20299883/site/newsweek/

Defying the Fatwa
Amid cleric-issued fatwas and tight security, a controversial new Pakistani film is breaking box-office records.

By Fasih Ahmed
Newsweek
Updated: 1:19 p.m. ET Aug. 16, 2007
Aug. 16, 2007 - Fatwas and Islamist fury have not deterred Pakistani audiences from queuing up in record numbers for "Khuda Kay Liye" ("In the Name of God"), a slickly packaged three-hour-long polemic that is riling the mullahs and has become the Pakistani film industry's biggest blockbuster, counting even Pakistan's president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, among its fans.

A musical, "In the Name of God" opened in Karachi and Lahore on July 20, amid tight security. Weeks earlier, the radical cleric and Red Mosque leader Abdul Rashid Ghazi had issued a fatwa against the film and its makers. And though Ghazi was one of more than 50 killed in the mosque assault in early July, copycat clerics continue to make the filmmakers and cinema-owners nervous. Fearing the worst, the film's writer and director, Shoaib Mansoor, has taken an extended vacation with his family outside Pakistan. And cinemas like Lahore's DHA—located in a tony military-run neighborhood—are secured by armed sentinels, with ticketholders having to pass through metal detectors.

The film itself is heavy on message and touches on a number of taboo topics: marital rape, forced marriage and jihad, tapping into Pakistan's anti-mullah mood as well as the customary popular disenchantment with the United States. Its plot centers on two brothers, one who goes from jeans-wearing musician to jihad-fighting fanatic; the other, arrested in Chicago after 9/11, is tortured into paralysis by U.S. interrogators.

Despite the controversy, "In the Name of God" has created such a buzz that the injunctions against it are largely being ignored; it's selling out movie houses across the country, and it’s being credited with the revival of Lollywood, as Pakistan's film industry is called. Playing on 11 screens in 10 cities (including cinemas either run by the military or situated in Army cantonments), it has prompted debate on Islam on talk shows and op-ed pages and is breaking box-office records: it took in $180,000 in its opening weekend and grossed $500,000 in its first three weeks—good cues, considering the film was Lollywood’s most expensive production ever, at $3.5 million. It's slated for release in the United States, Britain and India in the coming months. "It's heroic for the population to want to see this film," says Mir Ibrahim Rehman, who heads the GEO TV Network, the Pakistani media conglomerate that produced the film. "We didn't want to make a popcorn film. We wanted this film to prompt a dialogue and discussion." If its popularity is any indication, they've got an impressive start.

© 2007 Newsweek, Inc.