The ultimate box office showdown this Christmas is just a few days away as Shah Rukh Khan’s Dunki and Prabhas’ Salaar: Part 1 – Ceasefire hit theaters on December 21 and 22, respectively.
Dunki, a comedy-drama on illegal immigration, marks the exciting first-time collaboration between Bollywood giants SRK and director Rajkumar Hirani.
Meanwhile, Prabhas joins forces with Kannada filmmaker Prashanth Neel for Salaar, an A-rated action drama depicting the transformation of two best friends into bitter enemies.
Dunki, which will be released in a single language, contrasts with Salaar’s Pan India release across multiple languages.
The advance booking of both the movies has started opening gradually. Salaar advances are going strong, however, the Hindi advance hasn’t opened yet. While Dunki opens advances in very limited shows to an encouraging response.
The advance booking for Dunki opened late on Saturday evening in some parts of the country. The response has been good till now. In Kolkata the response is phenomenal. The bookings are picking up in Mumbai and Delhi. The bookings in South will open tomorrow at 10 AM.
Till 9 PM, Dunki has sold approximately 10,000 tickets in PIC, the national chain of multiplexes( PVR, INOX, and Cinepolis) which is quite good, though not on par with front-loaded films like Jawan and Pathaan. As of now, Dunki is on course to open around the 40-42 crore mark on its opening day (non-holiday) in India.
Salaar will definitely take an earth-shattering opening in terms of advance bookings in Telugu states. But the hype in the North is nowhere near Baahubali or KGF. RRR scored 19 crores in Hindi markets and Salaar should surpass it to have a chance at breaking even.
If Dunki’s word of mouth comes positive it will upset Salaar’s chances in a big way as the family audience will prefer to watch an entertaining drama filled with humor over a dark action thriller.
