Box office: Badhaai Do has a poor first week

Director Harshavardhan Kulkarni’s Badhaai Do (2022) recorded a decent jump in collections on Sunday when it made Rs3.35 crore nett. But the film starring Rajkummar Rao and Bhumi Pednekar could not capitalize on it and its collections on the weekdays remained poor.

Badhaai Do recorded an average collection of Rs1.85 crore nett on its first Monday in theatres. But from then on the movie just went downhill, ending up with a collection of just Rs70 lakh yesterday, according to the trade website BoxOfficeIndia.com.

Trade sources put the cost of production of Badhaai Do, follow-up to the hit film Badhaai Ho (2018), at an estimated Rs30 crore. The film’s total collection at the domestic box office so far is just Rs11.85 crore nett.

Clearly, the film needs a dramatic change of fortune on its second weekend in theatres, but given the trend of the first week, that looks unlikely, even if no Hindi film is being released in theatres this week. Given this scenario, only a miracle will take the movie anywhere close to its cost of production.

While Badhaai Do did get mostly positive reviews, the film's LGBTQ-themed plot found takers only in metropolitan cities.

Meanwhile, the Hindi dubbed version of the Telugu movie Pushpa: The Rise (2021) saw its first fall in its ninth week. The film collected Rs1.35 crore nett in the past seven days. However, the Allu Arjun-starrer has already attained super success by amassing Rs106.85 crore in Hindi alone.