Dhurandhar is looking to collect Rs. 32 crore nett approx on its third Saturday. That marks a 50 per cent jump from its Friday business. The growth is lesser than the 70-80 per cent surges we are used to seeing from films nowadays on Saturdays in the later weekends of release, especially from the ones that perform strongly in the bigger centres. But then we are not used to seeing the level of business that Dhurandhar is operating at, which is closer to double the previous record holders, so the growth will naturally appear relatively muted.
The third weekend remains on track to collect Rs. 85-90 crore nett, which keeps it on course to not just cross Rs. 700 crore nett but overtake Pushpa 2 (Hindi) as the highest-grossing Hindi film of all time domestically. The cumulative box office collections for the film after today will be Rs. 491 crore nett approx. It will be crossing the Rs. 500 crore nett mark tomorrow, on its seventeenth day of release. The Rs. 800 crore nett milestone also remains in play, though there is a lot of work to do for that in the coming weeks.
Two weeks ago, when Dhurandhar released, the atmosphere was largely sombre. Pre-sales were not strong, and not much was expected for the long run, despite the film appearing good, due to genre and style limitations. There was also a forced controversy before release on how the lead actor “insulted” sentiments related to Kantara, due to which there were even some “boycott” calls. Then there was further negativity looming from the feeding reports in the industry. In short, obituaries were written, and some were even celebratory.
Cut to today, the film is putting numbers no one imagined from a Bollywood film, let alone something like this, which was dismissed for being “urban action type” that has no takers. It is often said that the box office is unpredictable, which feels like something just said for the sake of saying, because, of course, it can be predicted. But it is runs like Dhurandhar that give the phrase its meaning, because this is a result that simply no one predicted.
