8th November 2018 – This is when Bollywood saw its greatest high as for the first time ever the much elusive 50 crores mark on a single day was crossed. It was the big Diwali holiday, as much as 52.25 crores was scored (a hitherto unheard of number), the movie was Thugs Of Hindostan, and the superstar who made it possible was none other than Aamir Khan, the founder of 100 Crore Club (Ghajini), 200 Crore Club (3 Idiots) and 300 Crore Club (PK).
Bollywood realised its true potential on Diwali and many more biggies followed in years to come, notably Housefull 4 (Akshay Kumar), Sooryavanshi (Akshay Kumar) and the biggest of them all, Tiger 3 (Salman Khan).
However what happened on 1st November 2024 was when history was recreated on the big Diwali holiday. Singham Again (Ajay Devgn) and Bhool Bhulaiyaa 3 (Kartik Aaryan) arrived and between the two films as much as 80.30 crores were collected with former contributing with 43.70 crores and latter bringing in 36.60 crores.
As was mentioned in last week’s column as well, the best case scenario this Diwali was going to be 35-40 crores and this is what happened as 35.21 crores came in, what with Thamma bringing in 25.11 crores and Ek Deewane Ki Deewaniyat chopping in with 10.10 crores. For the starcast and merits, they did well. However when it comes to utilising the full potential of Diwali, Bollywood lost out on its big ticket offerings.
Clearly, with multiplex screens going up over the years gone by and so did the ticket prices, collections to the tune of 100 crores on a single day are pretty much achievable. In fact this could well happen in 2026 when Border 2 releases.
However, what happens on Diwali 2026?
Well, there is good news indeed. Ranbir Kapoor led Ramayana sees its big arrival on the festive occasion and test assured, next Diwali is going to sparkle in the biggest way ever. Even at a conservative scale, the first day opening would be at least 100 crores and here I am talking about just the Hindi version. Considering the fact that the makers are planning a truly global release for the film and even within India there would be proper release in Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam and other regional languages, there would be at least 100 crores more coming in from there, which means overall, a first day total of 200 crores is on the cards.
Of course these are massive expectations indeed but then with Sunny Deol as Lord Hanuman and Yash as Ravana, the cast is huge enough to warrant pan-India footfalls on a massive scale. There is still a year more to go for the Nitesh Tiwari magnum opus which means a lot of promotional and marketing push will further set Ramayana as the biggest motion picture release ever.
This Diwali may have been rather subdued when it comes to meeting its full potential but 2026 is going to be a different ball game altogether. Hopefully, we would have audiences in hordes just the way it’s expected in a big holiday season and Ranbir Kapoor will make that happen on his first big screen arrival 3 years after Animal.
