‘Pathaan’, starring Shah Rukh Khan, was released on January 25 and as discussed in our last week’s edition, it took an earth-shattering opening. It became the first film to collect as much as Rs. 68 Crore in a single day. Even after the five-day extended weekend, it continued to do well.
A lot of experts expected ‘Pathaan’ to drop in the second weekend. However, it didn’t and collected Rs. 22.25 Crore and Rs. 27.50 Crore on its second Saturday and Sunday, respectively. This is a huge feat for a film that has already collected a lot.
On Saturday, February 4, it crossed ‘Dangal’s (2016) collections and emerged as the biggest Hindi film of all time. Meanwhile, on Wednesday, February 8, it crossed ‘KGF – Chapter 2’s (2022) lifetime earnings.
In two weeks, ‘Pathaan’ is expected to collect Rs. 438 Crore. The next target is to beat ‘Baahubali 2’s (2017) collections of Rs. 510 Crore. This means that ‘Pathaan’ will have to earn Rs. 72 Crore from the third week to achieve this target. This seems a bit impossible as it earned around Rs. 90 Crore in the second week against Rs. 347.75 Crore in Week 1. Hence, as one can see, the collections will fall further in the forthcoming weeks. Also till now, it had no competition but next Friday, it’ll compete with big films like ‘Shehzada’ and ‘Ant-Man And The Wasp: Quantumania’. At the most, ‘Pathaan’ can earn Rs. 60 Crore more and barely cross the Rs. 500 Crore mark. Going past ‘Baahubali 2’s collections seems out of the question.
But post-pandemic, one can never be sure. When films work, they work like crazy as seen by the performance of films like ‘Kantara’ (2022), ‘Drishyam 2’ (2022), etc. For instance, no one expected ‘Drishyam 2’ to collect Rs. 232 Crore when it had completed two weeks. After collecting Rs. 159 Crore in fifteen days, it earned around Rs. 72 Crore from Week 3 onwards and that was also unexpected. Hence, a clearer idea of the lifetime earnings of ‘Pathaan’ will emerge after how it fares in its third weekend.
Nevertheless, the purpose is served. ‘Pathaan’s mega-blockbuster success brought respite to the industry and made it clear that Bollywood has bounced back with a bang.
