Vishal Chaturvedi’s devotional film about Neem Karoli Baba has done something almost nobody expected: it’s crossed the Rs 100 crore mark at the box office . No big stars, a budget under Rs 2 crore, and it still got there, just took over a month instead of a single opening weekend, which is how most big Bollywood films do it these days.
In its fifth week, the film is now directly competing with #Dhurandhar [first part] – which holds the record for the HIGHEST WEEK 5 BUSINESS. That Saturday jump came from Rs 16.50 crore earned across 6,055 screens, a 65% bump over Friday’s numbers. Friday itself, despite falling on the Janmashtami holiday, brought in Rs 10 crore from 5,055 screens. That’s actually a small dip from Thursday, when the film made Rs 11 crore. With a much wider release, over 11,000 shows, Mirzapur opened strong at Rs 25.75 crore on Friday and climbed to Rs 32 crore on Saturday. And a day earlier, it actually posted the best fifth-Friday number of any Hindi film ever, beating out heavyweights like Dhurandhar (Rs 8.75 crore), Chhaava (Rs 6.50 crore), the Hindi version of Pushpa 2 (Rs 3.75 crore), and Dhurandhar 2 (Rs 3.25 crore). Week three saw the film suddenly take off, crossing Rs 1 crore in a single day for the first time, more than two weeks into its run. It kept climbing even as Independence Day brought competition from Batwara 1947 and Awarapan 2, closing the week at Rs 10.40 crore. The film made 57 times more than it had in its opening week, raking in Rs 61 crore as word-of-mouth spread and theatres kept adding screens to keep up with demand.
Adding to the drama, Friday also marked the release of Mirzapur: The Movie, the big-screen spin-off of the hit Amazon Prime series directed by Gurmeet Singh. But here’s the thing: Hanuman Ansh didn’t fold. Then everything changed. Week four is where things got genuinely wild. That same day also marks a new chapter for Hanuman Ansh itself. Hombale Films has picked up the international distribution rights and will roll the film out globally. And with director Vishal Chaturvedi hinting at a sequel, this might just be the beginning for a film nobody expected to be a phenomenon at all.
Despite Mirzapur’s bigger opening, the smaller film still made more than half of what the new release earned on Saturday.
