Dhurandhar: The Revenge sold 125K tickets across two national chains (PVRINOX and Cinepolis) in its first 24 hours of sales. Technically, it’s not the first 24 hours of sales for the film, because it has been on sale for previews for a week now, but it was the first 24 hours on sale for the opening day.
Dhurandhar: The Revenge ranks as the second-highest seller in these chains, trailing Jawan (150K). However, that ranking is misleading. Dhurandhar: The Revenge has sold 290K tickets for previews in these chains so far. Out of those 290K, even conservatively speaking, at least 100K would have booked the film for its opening day in 24 hours, if not 200K or maybe even all of them. We will never know for sure what a proper first 24 hours for this film could have been, but what’s sure is that it would have blown apart the record of Jawan.
Typically, ticket sales slow after the big first day of advance sales. Dhurandhar: The Revenge will also slow down, but perhaps to a lesser degree than the others. The film has already been on sale for a week now, which would have burned off that super early ticket booking demand, which drives the first 24 hours sale. That means, the fall shall be lower, given boost was lower.
Looking ahead, the first target for it is to beat the record held by Pathaan of 545K tickets for its opening day. It appears well-positioned to take that. From there, it needs to be seen how high it can go. The overall India record is held by Avengers: Endgame, which sold over a million tickets at the national chains. Back then, it was four national chains, three counting PVR and INOX as one. Carnival Cinemas went defunct post-COVID, but many of those cinemas were taken over by the remaining two chains. Beating Avengers: Endgame record is probably going to be tough because the film will be burning off a lot of first-day-first-show demand with previews. Of course, inclusive of previews, it will be a lot easier, in fact, very likely as well.
The top highest first 24 hours ticket sellers at national chains for Bollywood are as follows:
Rank
Title
Tickets
1
Jawan
150,000
2
Dhurandhar: The Revenge
125,000
(+ 290,000 previews)
3
Pathaan
122,000
4
Sultan
100,000
The Sultan numbers in the list above are estimates. These four are most likely the only Bollywood films to sell more than 100K tickets at the national chains. It is possible that some earlier films, particularly before 2022, are missing from the above list due to limited data, as systematic national chain advance tracking has only become common in recent years.