Ranveer Singh‘s 83 has collected over 100 crores at the domestic box office, the makers said on Monday. However, the Kabir Khan-directorial took 17 days to reach the milestone.
The film’s performance, when compared to the other releases around the same time, is at best, average.
Allu Arjun‘s film Pushpa, which turned out to be one of 83‘s biggest competitors at the box office alongside Spider-Man: No Way Home , has garnered better word of mouth and the Hindi version of the film, though has not touched the 100-crore mark, has raked in more footfall even on its fourth Monday. In fact, according to a report in BoxOfficeIndia, the Arjun-starrer did more than double the business in its fourth weekend than 83 despite having lesser circuits and the Covid-19 restrictions in several cities.
Spider-Man: No Way Home meanwhile has already crossed Rs 200 crore at the Indian box office, becoming only the third Hollywood film ever to achieve the feat.
Another report in BOI stated that while the Hindi version of Pushpa has become the biggest success story post the pandemic in the Hindi markets, 83 joined the ranks of films like Bombay Velvet (2015), Drona (2008), and Deedar E Yaar (1982) to be among the biggest box office disasters of all time.
Recommended
In an interview with PTI, Khan blamed the pandemic for the lesser footfalls and average performance of his film. The director said, “With this pandemic, despite our best planning, one can never get it right. We did not know that the explosion (of cases) would literally take place on the day of our release. December 24 is when we (the country) hit 6,000 cases and in 10 days we crossed a lakh. It was just sad.”
The director said that 48 hours prior to the release, the team got an indication that things could go “spiraling out of control”, but it was too late for them to react, so they went ahead keeping their “fingers crossed”, he added. Makers have also indicated that the film has already “broken even”.