Indian superstar Shah Rukh Khan is back, and in a big way, as his action-packed espionage pic Pathaan has been breaking records for a Hindi title since debuting Wednesday in India and overseas. This also ends a lengthy hiatus from the big screen as a lead for SRK, and gives a boost to Bollywood which has had a rough run of late.
Through Friday, the Yash Raj Films title has grossed 313 crore
($39M) globally. That makes it already the biggest opening weekend of a
Bollywood title ever worldwide, with more to be added today and tomorrow.
Expectations are that it ends up with around $40M in India through Sunday
and $65M+ global which would land it among the top starts for any Indian
title alongside RRR, Baahubali 2 and KGF 2.
Per Yash Raj,
Pathaan has also set other new records: it is the fastest Hindi film to
cross 300 crore (36.8M) worldwide and the first Hindi film to collect over
300 crore gross during the launch session.
On Friday, Pathaan
raked in 39.25 crore net/47 crore gross ($4.8M/$5.77M) — Indian box office
reporting is not centralized which makes for some confusion. Meanwhile, its
overseas gross on Friday was $5.3M, for a running cume of $13.7M through
Friday.
Akshaye Widhani, CEO of Yash Raj Films, said, “It is incredible
that Pathaan has registered the biggest all-time opening in India and
overseas… Pathaan has been blessed by Indians across the globe and what is
happening with this film is unprecedented and historic.”
In the
film, which also stars Deepika Padukone and John Abraham, SRK plays the
titular spy who takes on the leader of a group of mercenaries who have
nefarious plans to target his homeland.
When it bowed on Wednesday, Pathaan logged the biggest Day 1
ever for a Hindi film in India at 57 crore ($7M), and did so on a
non-holiday. This gave SRK his biggest opening at home (as well as
globally), same goes for Abraham while it was Padukone’s highest first-day
gross ever in India. It was also tops for Yash Raj and director Siddharth
Anand, in India and worldwide. Further, IMAX nabbed its biggest opening day
ever for an Indian film on Wednesday.
Outside India, Pathaan, part of producer Aditya Chopra’s
ambitious spy universe, logged the biggest opening day for an Indian film in
the UK.
Through Day 2, Thursday (Republic Day in India), the
total global box office rose to 219.6 crore ($27M). In India, Thursday
anointed Pathaan as the first Hindi film to top the 70 crore net ($8.6M)
collection on a single day.
