Ok, so we are all still basking in the glory of Dhurandhar. The film has done 875 crores already, is an All Time Mega Blockbuster success, has been running successfully into the seventh week now, ensured that the holiday season stayed in celebratory mode, kept theatres busy and box office jingling, and ultimately made 2025 a good year overall for the box office.
All is well then? Well, not really!
It’s one film, just this one film, which made sure that there was a turnaround for Bollywood and 2025 – which otherwise looked good at best – closed on a very good note. Is it enough though? No, not at all. That’s because while this film has done wonders, there have been so many disappointments in the last few weeks.
A lot better was expected and had the holiday season actually performed to the optimal, then the overall scenario at the box office would have been far more rosy. Instead, what we witnessed was a number of films not doing well at all and getting sunken by the Dhurandhar wave.
Kis Kisko Pyaar Karoon 2 was the first casualty that came straight after Dhurandhar and ironically, the second week of the Aditya Dhar was bigger than its first week, which means the Kapil Sharma film – despite being well made – stood no chance. Tu Meri Main Tera Main Tera Tu Meri arrived on Christmas but then Dhurandhar was only peaking and stayed on to be the first choice of the audience. Merit or no merit wasn’t the question here – the core issue was that audiences were just not interested in checking out anything new. Ikkis came later and its core ideology was opposite to that of Dhurandhar where sentiments were on the other extreme. That came in its way of being grabbed by the audiences who were already swept off with a different narrative for the last so many weeks.
The only film that has somehow managed to survive Dhurandhar onslaught is Avatar: Fire and Ash as it has done business of over 200 crores in India. That said, even this is almost half of what its predecessor Avatar: The Way of Water (375 crores) had scored. Expectations were much higher but thankfully, it has still kept the box office busy despite arriving just a week after Dhurandhar. On the other hand The Raja Saab, coming straight after Prabhas’ last biggie Kalki 2898 AD, has turned out to be one of the biggest box office disasters ever by folding up around 20 crores.
This goes on to show that in the last six weeks, practically two films have done well and the verdict would remain the same once Dhurandhar completes its seven weeks this Thursday, before making way for Border 2. The biggie releases this Friday and all eyes on this one to emerge as a blockbuster no less. On its release back in 1997, Border had not just taken the biggest opening of all times by crossing 1 crore mark (a huge number back then), it had also emerged as an All Time Blockbuster. Now that the second in the franchise is releasing, expectations are mammoth.
Will it emerge as a blockbuster? Well, we will know on Friday once the movie plays on screen. However from the opening standpoint, one expects nothing less than 40 crores here. That’s the kind of number you associate with a biggie like this that Sunny Deol leading the show and Varun Dhawan ensuring that the film is getting all the pre-release eyeballs. Everything is going in its favour. Perfect release date leading to Republic Day holiday on Monday, scale, size, setting, audience sentiment (post Dhurandhar), and an overall big screen extravaganza promise.
Also, if there was some brouhaha after the teaser then that has been laid to rest as well after the trailer which has met with a smash response and reignited positive sentiments around warranting a theatrical watch.
It has been really a long time since Dhurandhar struck at the big screen and now something new needs to arrive at theatres and keep the box office juggernaut going. Border 2 needs to be a 300 Crore Club entrant at the very minimum because the next real big one – Dhurandhar 2 – is still two months away (19th March). Till then, one biggie needs to hold the centerstage and give Bollywood a box office money spinner that it deserves.
The film that would need to shoulder that responsibility is Border 2!
