Will Baahubali 2 launch the ₹1,000-crore club?

Seldom do movies manage to translate the pre-movie release hype into box-office collections. Baahubali 2: The Conclusion is not just another film exceeding the hype but has been smashing box-office records on a daily basis. The SS Rajamouli multi-lingual movie opened to a massive ₹121 crore and netted ₹300 crore in just three days.

With Baahubali: The Beginning, which was released in 2015, said to have collected around ₹650 crore, the concluding part of the franchise could well be on its way to cross ₹1,000 crore in box-office earnings—a feat which no Indian movie has achieved so far.

If the figures and collections are anything to go by, then it may not come as a big surprise if that mark is achieved by the second weekend itself. The Monday collection for the Hindi version alone was ₹40 crore, according to movie critic Taran Adarsh.

According to trade analyst Ramesh Bala, the total profits, including the gross in the country and overseas is ₹625 crore.

In the US alone, it grossed over ₹66 crore over the weekend even though it opened in only 425 theatres across the continent.

Baahubali 2 has already beaten the first weekend collections record of Sultan, which collected ₹105.5 crore; Dangal ₹104.5 crore; and, Bajranji Bhaijaan ₹101.42 crore.

While the movie reached the ₹300-crore mark in just three days, it took Dangal 13 days, PK 17 days and Bajrangi Bhaijaan 20 days.

The top two highest grossing Indian movies, as of now, are the 2014 release PK at ₹792 crore and Dangal at ₹744.34 crore—both Aamir Khan starrers.

Sholay, which was released in 1975, in an era of single screen theatres and when tickets cost just a small fraction of today’s prices, grossed around ₹213 crore, without factoring in inflation. To date, more than 1,100 prints of Sholay are in circulation—the highest number for any Hindi film.