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Pathaan Overseas Box Office: Shah Rukh Khan's film takes a Blockbuster start in advance booking
Pathaan is fetching phenomal response in the advance bookings in countries like USA, UAE, Germany and Australia. All set to emerge Shah Rukh Khan's biggest opener. Read detailed box office report
Due to release on 25th January, we are now just 10 days away from the release of Shah Rukh Khan's much-awaited action-packed entertainer, the Siddharth Anand directed Pathaan. While the advance bookings for the film in India are yet to open, the producers, YRF have already started the advance bookings in the key international pockets and the early response to the film on the ticket sales is a treat to the sore eyes. The industry calls it the ‘Shah Rukh Khan Impact’ as the King is returning to conquer his throne after a long gap.
The pre-sales story for the film started in Germany in December last year, where the sales opened a full month before the release. The tickets in many of the big theatres in Hamburg and Berlin were sold out rather quickly. Now Germany isn’t a huge market for Indian films per se, but the interest exhibited in the film did presage a potential breakout elsewhere as you don’t sell out 300 seater cinemas a month before release, just like that. And that did in fact happen as you will read below from the sales report in some of the markets.
Pathaan set to emerge SRK's biggest opener in UAE & Australia
UAE - As of writing, Pathaan has sold 3500 tickets for the opening day in the middle eastern market, which amounts to $50K. Back in 2017, Raees opened to $350,000 in the UAE which was and still is the highest opening day for a Bollywood film on a working day. If pre-sales are to go by, Pathaan will be looking to surpass that one with ease.
Australia - The film has sold 3000 plus tickets worth A$65,000 in Australia for the opening day. Now, Australia is a weak performing region for SRK as his films haven’t scored as well as his other contemporaries but Pathaan is looking to change that. The film will be helped by the Australia Day (Jan 26th) holidays over the weekend. Raees in 2017, opened to A$187K on the same weekend, Pathaan should hit A$200K rather easily, the probable target being A$300K plus. Currently, Sanjay Leela Bhansali's Padmavaat holds the opening day record in Australia with collections of A$364K, also released on the same day 25th January.
Rewriting records in Germany
Germany - Coming back to where it all started, in Germany, the film had sold 8500 tickets (€125,000) as of yesterday for the 5-day weekend, with 4000 of those being for the opening day. The biggest opening weekend for a mainstream Bollywood is €142,983 by Dilwale, and Pathaan is going to cross that number in a couple of days with not a single show played. These sorts of sales are rather unprecedented and making any sense of these is a bit tough, but it is possible that the film go on to gross €200-250K, maybe even €300,000 extended weekend over there.
There are strong pre-sales reported in other markets like North America and the United Kingdom as well though sales data is still awaited, will be updated as we receive it.
For the uninitiated, Dilwale holds the record for the biggest opening overseas for SRK with $8.75 million first weekend. Big overseas numbers have been a rarity in recent times, with only Brahmastra being the only one which crossed the $10 million mark. No SRK starrer has missed the $10 million mark since like forever, so Pathaan doing that was never much of a doubt, though, with these sorts of pre-sales, one can certainly hope for something like $20 million plus, which was last done by Sanju in 2018. The international response to Pathaan also suggests the anticipation in the audience to see Shah Rukh Khan back on the screen and the same trend will reflect in the advance sales in India too when they open up for the audience next week.
Pathaan is touted to be one of India’s biggest action spectacles to date and is a part of Aditya Chopra's ambitious spy universe, which kicked off with Ek Tha Tiger in 2012 followed by Tiger Zinda Hai (2017) and War (2019). Being the fourth film of the universe, it also marks the inception point for the crossover of characters from one film to the other, which eventually leads to a big-ticket multi-starrer finale. Salman Khan has an extended cameo in Pathaan, in his avatar of iconic spy, Tiger aka. Avinash Singh Rathore. The spy universe then continues with the release of Tiger 3 starring Salman with Katrina Kaif and Emraan Hashmi during the Diwali 2023 weekend. The film will see an extended appearance from Shah Rukh Khan as Pathaan. Stay tuned to Pinkvilla for more updates.
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