Prahaar Box Office: Dussehra Lifts Rajkummar Rao Film

Prahaar, the Rajkummar Rao courtroom drama about public prosecutor Ujjwal Nikam, got a holiday push on its first Tuesday. Sacnilk estimates the film earned ₹3.30 crore net in India on Day 5, October 20, up 65 percent from ₹2 crore on Monday, taking its five-day India net to ₹14.45 crore and its worldwide gross to ₹19.51 crore. The jump came on Dussehra, but the film still trails Yami Gautam's Nayyi Navelli, and the trackers do not agree on the totals or on what the film cost to make.

The first five days

Sacnilk's day-wise India net reads ₹2.35 crore on Friday, ₹3.15 crore on Saturday, ₹3.65 crore on Sunday, ₹2 crore on Monday and ₹3.30 crore on Tuesday. The Times of India carried the same numbers and noted that Sunday is still the film's best single day.

The film was playing 3,294 shows on Tuesday at an overall occupancy of 24 percent, according to Sacnilk, compared with 4,133 shows and 13 percent on opening day. Sacnilk put Tuesday footfalls at 147,557 and the five-day total at 640,409. Its India gross stands at ₹17.21 crore, and overseas markets have added ₹2.30 crore, including ₹15 lakh on Tuesday.

The Indian Express described the Tuesday figure as a jump but pointed out that the film has drawn only about 6.4 lakh footfalls in five days.

Where the trackers differ

The estimates are close but not identical. Bollywood Hungama lists ₹2.20 crore for Day 1, ₹3.25 crore for Day 2, ₹3.50 crore for Day 3, ₹2.08 crore for Day 4 and ₹3.23 crore for Day 5, for an India net of ₹14.26 crore. Its opening weekend figure is ₹8.95 crore, against ₹9.15 crore from Sacnilk's daily numbers.

KS Box Office is slightly higher, at ₹14.68 crore net over five days, with a ₹9.28 crore weekend and Tuesday marked as an approximate ₹3.40 crore. The bigger gap is overseas. Bollywood Hungama puts the film's overseas gross at ₹0.95 crore and its worldwide gross at ₹17.93 crore, while Sacnilk has ₹2.30 crore overseas and ₹19.51 crore worldwide. KS Box Office estimates about ₹20 crore worldwide.

Koimoi's four-day report, which covers the run up to Monday, matched Sacnilk's India net of ₹11.15 crore at that stage and put the worldwide gross at ₹15.31 crore.

The budget question

The reported cost of the film varies even more than the collections. The Indian Express says Prahaar was reportedly made on a budget of ₹60 crore and is still a long way from breaking even. Koimoi describes a controlled budget of ₹30 to ₹35 crore and said the film had recovered more than 30 percent of its investment after four days. KS Box Office estimates ₹45 crore including prints and advertising.

None of these figures comes from the producers, Maddock Films, and none of the trackers has given the film a verdict yet. Bollywood Hungama lists it as pending. Which budget is right matters a great deal for how the run will be judged, so any early talk of a hit or a flop should be read with that in mind.

The clash with Nayyi Navelli

Prahaar opened on October 16 alongside Nayyi Navelli, the Yami Gautam horror comedy directed by Balaji Mohan. Nayyi Navelli also rose on Tuesday. Sacnilk estimates it earned ₹4.35 crore net on Day 5 across 4,835 shows, a 64.2 percent rise over Monday, taking its India net to ₹18.65 crore and its worldwide gross to ₹24.68 crore. The Indian Express reported that it has drawn nearly nine lakh footfalls in five days.

Bollywood Hungama's running total for Nayyi Navelli is lower, at ₹17.44 crore, but on every tracker it is ahead of Prahaar, helped partly by a wider release.

Both Hindi films are small next to the South Indian release in the same window. Sacnilk estimates that Rajinikanth's Jailer 2 earned ₹45.55 crore in India on Dussehra and has passed ₹540 crore worldwide, India TV reported. Ajay Devgn's Drishyam 3: The Conclusion, in its third week, collected ₹6.25 crore on the day, according to the same report.

Rajkummar Rao's run since the pandemic

Koimoi places Prahaar's four-day worldwide gross of ₹15.31 crore eighth among Rajkummar Rao's post-pandemic releases, ahead of Hit: The First Case and Bheed. On its count, his ten films since then add up to about ₹1,235 crore gross worldwide, though most of that comes from Stree 2, which Koimoi lists at ₹884.45 crore. The next highest on its list is Bhool Chuk Maaf at ₹91.57 crore.

Directed by Avinash Arun and produced by Maddock Films, the film is listed as Prahaar – The Ujjwal Nikam Story by Sacnilk and Bollywood Hungama, and as Prahaar: The Untold Story of Ujjwal Nikam by the Indian Express. It follows Nikam's work on the 1993 Bombay blasts and 2008 Mumbai attacks cases, with Wamiqa Gabbi, Jaideep Ahlawat and Lalit Prabhakar in the cast.

What comes next

The second weekend will face new competition. The Indian Express lists Sonakshi Sinha and Zaheer Iqbal's Tu Hai Meri Kiran and Gurmeet Choudhary's Tum Mere Ho for October 23, along with the delayed Hindi version of Vijay Deverakonda's Ranabaali. After that, the paper notes, both Prahaar and Nayyi Navelli have a clear run until Ramayana arrives on November 5.

Confirmed so far: a five-day India net of roughly ₹14.3 crore to ₹14.7 crore depending on the tracker, a holiday rise of roughly 55 to 70 percent on Tuesday, and a second-place finish behind Nayyi Navelli among the new Hindi releases. Not confirmed: the budget, the first-week total, and any verdict.

Sources

Cover photo: Strivedi1, Wikimedia Commons, [https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Rajkummar-_Rao-_Actor.jpg](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Rajkummar-_Rao-_Actor.jpg) (CC BY-SA 4.0).