Shah Rukh Khan’s Pathaan is off to a great start at the domestic box office. As per early estimates, Pathaan’s Hindi version has recorded a phenomenal ₹50-51 crore nett collection on day one at the domestic box office.
Distributed by Yash Raj Films and produced by Aditya Chopra and Alexander Dostal, Siddharth Anand’s Pathaan’s first day figures are among the top openers of all time as War (2019) had collected ₹50 crore nett and 2022’s KGF 2 (Hindi) had done a business of ₹52 crore nett.
The film released on 25 January.
Released in Hindi, Tamil and Telugu, Pathaan stars Deepika Padukone, Shah Rukh Khan and John Abraham in key roles.
The movie has smashed non-holiday records by leaps and bounds as Bahubali – The Conclusion (Hindi) was the biggest non-holiday opener before Pathaan.
Earlier, trade analyst Taran Adarsh had told PTI that Pathaan will revive Bollywood and will mark the beginning of a fantastic 2023 for the film industry. He had said before Pathaan’s release, “The film is going to take a historic start at the box office with opening day collections of ₹45-50 crore. The box office revival will begin with Pathaan, especially looking at its advance booking, which is very rare. It is a great start to 2023 despite being a working day.”
SRK, the king of Bollywood, had to face a systematic hate campaign when the makers of Pathaan released the film’s first song, Besharm Rang. Several BJP leaders including the home minister of Madhya Pradesh, had threatened to not allow the release of the film.
Even before the release of the film, Pathaan had smashed records with its incredible advance bookings. The advance bookings for Pathaan had opened on January 20.
The hate campaign and boycott call against Pathaan had begun much before the film’s release, with Hindutva groups leading a concerted campaign against it, on social media and through protests involving vandalism, citing the fact that an actor in it, Deepika Padukone, appears in a song in a saffron bikini.
