Pathaan box office collection day 1: Shah Rukh Khan revives Bollywood with blockbuster Rs 52 crore opening, likely to enter Rs 100 cr club on Republic
Amid fan frenzy of the kind that the Hindi film industry had not witnessed in a very long time, Shah Rukh Khan‘s Pathaan’s box office performance has been better than expected on opening day, and that too without the help of traditional marketing tools. Early estimates by industry tracker Sacnilk suggest that the film has netted Rs 52.5 crore on day one of release, which translates to a gross figure of Rs 62 crore. The final numbers are awaited.
The number would surely have been higher, Box Office India says, if the film was released on a holiday, like Republic Day today. But despite this, Pathaan is battling for the top spot on the list of biggest-ever Hindi debuts in a tight race with the Hrithik Roshan-starrer War (Rs 53.3 crore), Aamir Khan’s Thugs of Hindostan (Rs 52 crore) and the Hindi dub version of the Kannada film KGF: Chapter 2 (Rs 53.9 crore).
Pathaan is expected to extend its box office earnings on January 26, Republic Day, and comfortably enter Rs 100 crore club. This will be unprecedented for Hindi cinema and will bring Shah Rukh Khan on top of the biggest earner charts.
Pathaan has already posted the biggest numbers for a Hindi film of the pandemic and post-pandemic eras, and the biggest opening day figures of Shah Rukh’s career, overtaking Happy New Year (Rs 44 crore).
Billed as SRK’s grand comeback to starring roles after a gap of over four years, and his first action film after a career playing hearthrobs, Pathaan is an action-spy film that also stars Deepika Padukone and John Abraham. Salman Khan appears in an extended cameo as his character from the Tiger movies, which are also a part of the new shared universe that YRF has set up. The franchise also includes War, directed by Siddharth Anand, who also helmed Pathaan.
Anand has now directed two of the three biggest day-one grossers in Hindi movie history, and SRK has reestablished himself as Bollywood’s biggest star after over a decade of underperformances at the box office. His last film was 2018’s critical and commercial flop Zero, and he has two more movies lined up for 2023 — Jawan and Dunki.
