One of the great principles in moviemaking is that the hero is only as good as the person he fights. On Thursday, it was a duel between SRK and SRK. Between Jawan and Pathaan, if you may.
Shah Rukh Khan’s Pathaan, which was released in January this year, earned Rs 57 crore (domestic) on its first day for all languages. According to industry tracker Sacnilk, Jawan is set to gross a whopping Rs 75 crore (Hindi: Rs 65 crore, Tamil: Rs 5 crore, Telugu: Rs 5 crore) on its opening day, that is, Thursday, across all language versions in India.
To Pathaan’s Rs 105 crore worldwide on Day 1, Jawan is expected to post worldwide collections to the tune of Rs 120 crore, with overseas collections of about Rs 45 crore.
This was not exactly unanticipated. The day domestic bookings opened for the movie, around 140,000 tickets for the first day’s shows were sold. By the end of day two of advance bookings for day one, Jawan had sold 195,000 tickets. By day three, 2.35 million tickets had been sold. “Jawan connects with audiences at every level — story, larger than life experience, collaboration between two prolific movie markets,” says Sanjeev Kumar Bijli, executive director, PVR INOX.
The Atlee Kumar directorial posted 60% occupancy for the Hindi (IMAX) version, 51% for Tamil and 73% for the Telugu version on Thursday. Kolkata, Chennai and Lucknow were the top markets with 70%-plus occupancy for its Hindi (IMAX) shows. Kolkata led the attendance chart for Hindi (IMAX), with 88.33% overall occupancy and 94% for the morning show.
If we look at the all-India box office collections of the movies running in theaters at the moment, the top 5 are — Gadar 2 with Rs 509 crore (domestic), Jailer with Rs 341 crore, OMG 2 at Rs 159 crore, Rocky Aur Rani with Rs 152 crore and Oppenheimer with Rs 131 crore.