Bachchhan Paandey box office day one collection: Akshay Kumar film opens at ₹13 crore, lags behind The Kashmir Files

Akshay Kumar and Kriti Sanon’s new film Bachchhan Paandey has started strongly at the box office, earning over ₹13 crore on day one. The film, which has strong competition from the already well-performing The Kashmir Files, exceeded expectations according to trade analysts. However, Bachchhan Paandey’s opening day numbers are much lower than Akshay’s previous release Sooryavanshi and they were also pipped by the day eight earnings of The Kashmir Files. (Also read: Bachchhan Paandey movie review: Fierce Akshay Kumar, charming Kriti Sanon barely save a film riddled with cliches)

Directed by Farhad Samji, Bachchhan Paandey also stars Jacqueline Fernandez and Arshad Warsi. The action entertainer stars Akshay as a gangster and Kriti as a filmmaker trying to study him for her gangster film. Most reports said that the film earned somewhere between ₹13-14 crore on its opening day, Friday. Sooryavanshi, Akshay Kumar’s last theatrical release, earned ₹26 crore on its first day.

According to a report in BoxOfficeIndia.com, “Bachchhan Paandey has surprised on the first day with collections pushing upto the 13-13.50 crore nett range. Obviously, the film was expected to do better but that was before the wave of The Kashmir Files and no way did it look like getting to this number when advance plans opened earlier this week.” The Kashmir Files has still outdone Bachchhan Paandey on Friday, earning ₹19.15 crore.

Reports say that even though the film is second to The Kashmir Files, it is expected to have a strong weekend due to Akshay’s star power and the generally favourable word of mouth. The BoxOfficeIndia.com report does credit Bachchhan Paandey with a strong performance given that it released on Holi, when business is slow in the first half of the day.

Bachchhan Paandey and The Kashmir Files are expected to hold their fort at the box office for some time now, since there are no big Hindi theatrical releases this month. They may, however, be tested by the Hindi version of SS Rajamouli’s multilingual film RRR, which releases next week. Apart from south stars Ram Charan and Jr NTR, the film also stars Alia Bhatt and Ajay Devgn.