Box office: Pushpa makes a huge impact; Spider-Man continues winning streak

Filmmaker Sukumar’s multi-lingual film Pushpa: The Rise (2021) has made a tremendous opening at the box office. The film, starring Allu Arjun in the titular role, amassed Rs43.94 crore nett in all five languages yesterday, according to trade website BoxOfficeIndia.com.

With this, Pushpa has achieved the highest opening collection for an Indian film after the pandemic struck early last year. The film, made in Telugu, has also been dubbed and released in Tamil, Malayalam, Kannada and Hindi.

The opening of Pushpa, which also stars Rashmika Mandanna and Fahadh Faasil, has come as a relief for the Southern film industries which had been looking for a big hit for a while now. Even Rajinikanth’s Annaatthe (2021) could not achieve much success.

Of the total opening collection of close to Rs44 crore, the Hindi dubbed version of Pushpa has pulled in Rs3 crore, which is not bad given that the film does not have artistes who are popular in the Hindi market. Allu Arjun, though a big star in Telugu cinema, is an unknown entity in Hindi.

Meanwhile, the Hollywood film Spider-Man: No Way Home continued its winning streak, making Rs19.75 crore nett on its second day after amassing Rs33 crore on the opening day on Thursday.

The second-day collection dipped probably because the first-day excitement is huge for fans of the franchise. The film's two-day total now stands at an impressive Rs52.50 crore.

On its first day, the Marvel movie surpassed Rohit Shetty’s Akshay Kumar-starrer Sooryavanshi (2021), which had opened with Rs26 crore nett. Sooryavanshi's opening was encouraging for the trade at the time given the uncertainty around the first big-ticket Hindi release after the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic.

With both Pushpa and Spider-Man garnering interest among fans, last week’s struggling Hindi release Chandigarh Kare Aashiqui (2021) is out of the reckoning now.