Actors, filmmakers and standup comedians took to social media by mid-day on Thursday, Pathaan‘s Day 2 in theatres, to laud the Hindi film for crossing Rs 100 crore at the box office. According to Box Office Worldwide, the film is set to collect a whopping Rs 175 crore globally (domestic: Rs122 crore) by the end of Day 2.
The Shah Rukh Khan-Deepika Padukone starrer had the biggest opening for any film in Bollywood. The action thriller minted Rs 57 crore (Hindi version: Rs 55 crore) on Day 1, a non-holiday, beating the opening day collection of KGF: Chapter 2 (Rs 53.95 crore), War (Rs 51.60 crore) and Thugs Of Hindostan (Rs 50.75 crore). The Siddharth Anand directorial was expected to close Day 2 with a domestic net box office (BO) collection of Rs 65 crore for all languages.
Pathaan‘s opening figures were way beyond the predictions of Bollywood pundits. Made on a budget of Rs 250 crore, the film was projected to have an opening day net BO collection of around Rs 40 crore based on “compelling advances”. “Lifetime BO (net) collection may be in a wide range of Rs 250 crore, likely breaching the upper end of our estimate, if positive reviews and ‘word of mouth’ publicity ensue,” a report by Elara Capital had said before the film was released.
The biggest opening day figure logged by a Shah Rukh movie before this was Rs 45 crore by Happy New Year in 2014.
Pathaan opened to 48-50% average occupancy in the morning shows on January 25. The next day, thanks to positive word of mouth and the Republic Day holiday, the film saw average occupancy hitting 72-75%.
The movie started running on 5,500 screens in India and 2,500 screens overseas; by Day 2 more than 300 shows were reportedly added to the scheduled shows.
Gautam Dutta, CEO, PVR, said, “While regional movies performed exceptionally well post-pandemic, the underperformance of Hindi films due to multiple factors did impact the industry level collections. Tent-pole movies like this will certainly give an upswing to cinema advertising in the next fiscal to reach pre-pandemic levels.”