Sunny Deol’s Gadar 2 set the cash registers ringing for the cinemas on the first day of extended weekend.

The sequel to the 2001 film Gadar: Ek Prem Katha raked in a whopping ₹40.10 crore in net collections at the domestic box office on the first day, per trade analysts.

Akshay Kumar’s OMG 2, also a sequel, earned about ₹10.26 crore on Friday. This comes at a time when Rajinikanth’s Jailer is also gunning for the ₹100 crore-mark at the domestic box office.

Trade analyst Taran Adarsh tweeted, “Sunny Deol unleashes his power. All pre-release calculations go for a toss. Gadar 2 runs riot at the box office and is sensational on Day 1. It is the second highest opener of 2023.” He added that movie is doing very well in mass pockets and single screens

Analysts noted that Akshay Kumar’s OMG 2.0 is getting tough competition from Gadar 2, but is expected to see growth over the long weekend.

Also read: Rajini fever grips India with release of Jailer

This comes as a huge relief for the Hindi movie industry that is yet to witness collections recorded during pre-Covid period.

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Karan Taurani, Senior Vice-President, Elara Capital, said, “If Gadar 2 is able to sustain this kind of collection and get to the ₹150-200 crore mark, it will be a huge respite for the Hindi movie industry. It is a scale-driven film and will see strong contribution from single screens. While the overall box office collections have come back to 92 per cent of pre-Covid levels, the Hindi movie segment has been lagging behind and is still down by 25-30 per cent compared to pre-covid levels.”

“We need more consistency in the performance of Hindi films. We need to have at least one film breaching ₹150 crore-mark in every 6-8 weeks to achieve sharp recovery,” Taurani told businessline.

Gautam Dutta, Co-CEO, PVR INOX, pointed out that Gadar 2 is a “triumph of a story over a star.”

“It is breaking all records. What the original version had done during its entire run, Gadar 2 may end up doing it in the first weekend itself. Audiences are loving the film and its evoking a strong sense of patriotism,” he said

He further said that the cinema industry has begun witnessing a strong momentum with a string of movies, across segments, performing well at the box office.

“We have seen Hollywood movies—Oppenheimer, Barbie and MI 7 doing well. Now, we have a string of Bollywood movies performing well at the box office. With Jailer,Byomkesh o Durgo Rohosyo andCarry on Jatta 3, even regional film segment is also doing very well,“ Dutta added.

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