The advance booking of Yash Raj Films’ Pathaan will open across India on January 20, Friday. But, the studio opened pre-sales in select theatres in major cities across India on Wednesday afternoon.
Hyderabad’s Prasad’s IMAX was the first theatre to open booking, followed by several others from Mumbai, Delhi-NCR, Kolkata, Bangalore and a few other cities.
The response was stupendous. Within hours of these select theatres opening pre-sales, Pathaan sold 29,000 tickets, zooming past the Rs 1 crore mark in gross earnings. By midnight, the film had already sold Rs 1.33 crore in advance bookings in India. Add to that, the Rs 2-crore odd in gross earnings from select overseas markets, and Pathaan has already surpassed the advance booking collections of several Hindi films from last year. And this is six full days before release.
When advance booking opens for all territories and theatres on Friday, the numbers will surge ahead even quicker, analysts predict. The highest advance booking figure for any Bollywood film in the post-pandemic era is the Rs 17.71 crore grossed by last year’s Brahmastra. Pathaan looks set to cross that easily. The overall record for a Bollywood film is with War, which earned Rs 32.50 crore in advance bookings. Trade experts say Pathaan should cross that figure too.However, the overall advance booking record for any film in Hindi may yet be out of its reach.
The Hindi-dubbed version of KGF: Chapter 2 sold tickets worth Rs 41 crore in advance booking last year, which remains the record.
Across all languages, the figure was a whopping Rs 80 crore, which may be a bridge too far to cross for Pathaan.
Directed by Siddharth Anand, Pathaan is a spy-thriller with Shah Rukh in the titular role. The anticipation for the film is high since Shah Rukh is returning to the big screen in a lead role after over four years. The film, which is part of the YRF Spy Universe, also stars Deepika Padukone and John Abraham. It will be released in theatres on January 25.