The box office collection of Vivek Agnihotri's film 'The Kashmir Files' hit its highest on the fifth day as the movie continued to see soaring demand from moviegoers.
The film, which has been endorsed by prime minister Narendra Modi himself, racked up ₹18 crore on Tuesday, taking its total India business to ₹60.20 crore.
Movie critic and business analyst Taran Adarsh tweeted that the movie is breaking all records – both pre-Covid-19 as well as post-pandemic. Ajay Devgan's Tanhaji, which raked in ₹15.28 crore, was the highest-grossing film on the fifth day before the Covid-19 pandemic. Prior to 'The Kashmir Files', Akshay Kumar-starrer Suryavanshi was the highest-grossing movie on the fifth day after the pandemic.
"#TheKashmirFiles is a TSUNAMI at the #BO… FANTASTIC TRENDING, as footfalls, occupancy, numbers continue to soar… Day 5 higher than *all* previous days… BLOCKBUSTER... Fri 3.55 cr, Sat 8.50 cr, Sun 15.10 cr, Mon 15.05 cr, Tue 18 cr. Total: ₹ 60.20 cr. #India biz," Adarsh tweeted.
On Tuesday, PM Modi endorsed the movie at the BJP Parliamentary meeting. He lauded the film for trying to bring out the truth which was suppressed for years.
The prime minister added that there are various topics like the emergency and the partition on which no authentic films were made.
"People who always raise the flag of freedom of expression have been panicking for the past few days. And instead of reviewing it on facts or the art, they have launched a campaign to discredit it... Such people are not ready to accept the truth and don't want the world to watch it either," Modi said.
Last week, Haryana became the first state to make The Kashmir Files tax-free. Other BJP state governments quickly followed and now the movie is tax-free in states like Gujarat, Goa, Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka, Uttar Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh and Tripura.
"This incredible initial response to the film has led to more cinemas across the country to add shows and screens for 'The Kashmir Files' leading to a massive 4.5X growth in the number of screens made available for the movie in just the first week of its release," Ashish Saksena, chief operating officer – Cinemas at BookMyShow, tells Fortune India.
To be sure, the movie was initially released on just 630 screens across India. But on Day 3, the screen count crossed the 2,000 mark.
"The Kashmir Files has hit the ball out of the park with a whopping 1.5 million in ticket sales on BookMyShow for the opening week alone. The film started out with decent advance sales for the first day, but one hadn't imagined the pace at which the movie's uptake grew almost instantly, scaling up significantly at the end of the first day itself. Ticket sales for each day have been better than the previous day since Friday, with Monday already having sold more tickets in advance than we sold all day on Saturday," Saksena says.
"Strong word of mouth acting as a steady catalyst has once again proven that compelling content in the market will always have intense demand when it comes to theatrical screenings underscoring the importance of theatrical releases yet again, post the pandemic blip," he adds.
Audiences across Mumbai, Delhi-NCR, Bengaluru, Pune, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad, Kolkata, Lucknow, Surat and Vadodara have been amongst the first to rush to theatres to catch the film on the silver screen.
"We foresee this upswing in interest surrounding this film to increase as more and more cinephiles watch the film across newly added screens pan-India," says Saksena.
