Dangal has managed to go past Sultan in a very quick time. Though the Salman Khan starrer had a better first day (36.54 crore) and better first week (208.82 crore) in comparison to Dangal (29.78 crore and 197.53 crore) respectively, it is the Aamir Khan starrer which has marched ahead in the race big time. Its second week billing has been rock solid, something that has been demonstrated in Wednesday collections as well that read a solid 9.23 crore.
As a result, the film has now gathered 304.38 crore and that is phenomenal, considering the fact that the entire lifetime collections of Sultan was 300.45 crore. Considering the fact that the feat has been accomplished in 13 days itself and lifetime numbers of Dangal would very comfortably go past the 350 crore mark, it reflects how it is the word of mouth more than the opening number that has done the trick for the Nitesh Tiwari directed film.
Other than the fact that Dangal is now the biggest grosser of 2016, it is also one of the rare films to enter the 300 Crore Club. This is Bollywood’s fourth triple century in last two years, with two scored in 2016 itself. This establishes the fact that there is capacity available to be exploited and audience interest too is there. It is all about making an excellent film that can attract attraction of family audiences and once you do that (other triple centuries being PK and Bajrangi Bhaijaan), footfalls will be there.
2017 has many biggies in the offering that warrant audiences who can help in ticket sales worth 300 crore or more. One just hopes that ‘achche din’ pretty much continue in months to come as well and by the time 2017 comes to a close, a number of additional triple centuries are added to the Box Office records
*Estimates. Final numbers awaited
Joginder Tuteja tweets @tutejajoginder