‘Jawan’ Scores $64 Million In Opening Weekend

Indian star Shah Rukh Khan’s new Hindi film Jawan is ruling the ticket windows. After making a humongous opening on Thursday, the film fully utilized the extended weekend and scored $64.1 million at the global box office. Jawan features some of the biggest stars from film industries across India – apart from the Indian global star – Shah Rukh Khan, the film features south Indian superstar Nayanthara and Tamil star Vijay Sethupathi.

A majority of the technicians who worked on the film also came from the south Indian film industries. Bollywood’s Deepika Padukone and Sanjay Dutt also have small but important cameo roles in the action thriller. Apart from them, Sunil Grover, Sanya Malhotra, and Priyamani also play pivotal parts in the movie directed by Atlee.

In its first weekend itself, Jawan is just a little short of $65 million. In the US markets, Jawan toppled Hollywood hits Barbie and Oppenheimer to become the fourth-highest-grossing film for the weekend ending September 10. It earned $6.1 million in the US, according to Comscore
SCOR
. It also ranked at the second slot for worldwide collections over the weekend, second only to The Nun II.

Jawan holds the record for making the fastest run to $50 million collections. It is also Shah Rukh Khan’s biggest opener ever. The film made the highest single-day collection ever for a Hindi film on Sunday when it managed to score a little less than $10 million.

Khan’s new outing has been planned well – it had one of the widest releases for his films ever – it got roughly 10,000 screens across the globe. Among these, around 5,000 screens are in the Hindi regions of India alone, while south Indian audiences have a thousand screens for the film. Jawan makers managed to get an additional 4,000 screens outside India as well. Producer and film business analyst Girish Johar says that avoiding many media interactions and limiting the promotional tours across various cities kept the charm of watching the star on the big screen alive. The strategy worked for Khan around the time of Pathaan release and he did the same for Jawan release, he adds.

Jawan director Atlee is best known for his previous Tamil films such as Mersal, Bigil, Theri and Raja Rani. In his Bollywood debut, the filmmaker not only chooses to encash on the stardom of his entire cast, he also does so in a manner that satiates each one’s fanbase. Khan’s stardom rows the boat forward, and Sethupathi and Nayanthara’s charm have also been equally well-utilized.

Despite being a typical populist entertainer riding heavily on the stars’ fanbase, Jawan boldly puts across some poignant questions and even comes up with a socio-political message. Set in a country regularly flooded with allegations of corruption in the political system, Jawan urges the audience to use the power of voting for their government wisely.