Border 2 has opened advances in India, and the initial response has been, expectedly, strong. While ticket sales officially began this morning, several centres jumped the gun by making tickets available late last night. At the time of writing, the war film featuring an ensemble of Varun Dhawan, Diljit Dosanjh and Ahaan Shetty led by Sunny Deol has sold around 10,000 tickets across the national chains (PVRINOX and Cinepolis) for the opening day. Meanwhile, ticket booking platform BookMyShow is reporting near 20,000 tickets sold so far.
These are superb early numbers and clearly underline the sense of urgency among audiences. Border 2 is the kind of film that is expected to build strong momentum closer to release and see a sharp pickup on the final day of advances, making these initial figures particularly heartening. The target for the film will be to sell around 250K tickets at the national chains, which it can get to from this start. While that may not appear to be a big number compared to some of the other big films, which have clocked over 400-500K tickets there, Border 2 is expected to have stronger sales elsewhere, in non-national chains and single screens.
For the record, Gadar 2 had sold 274K tickets at the national chains for its opening day.
Border 2 is expected to open big, with Pinkvilla Predicts forecasting an opening day of around Rs. 40 crore. It is always encouraging when advances align with expectations, as they serve as the first real indicator of a film’s box office. Earlier yesterday, it was reported how advances in overseas markets were off to a strong start, and now India has mirrored the same trend. Now the focus is to get the reception right and build on this start. There is a big national holiday for Republic Day on Monday, which should fare in a big way for this film, having patriotic themes.
The last year was a mixed bag for the Hindi film industry, but it ended on a strong note with the record-breaking run of Dhurandhar. With Border 2, 2026 looks set to carry that momentum forward, with several more major releases lined up across the year.
