Ek Villain Returns box office opening day numbers are even lesser than Shamshera: ‘Need to gather momentum’

2014’s Ek Villain, starring Shraddha Kapoor and Sidharth Malhotra, opened with a fairly strong Rs 16.50 crore and ended up crossing the Rs 100 crore mark.

Ek Villain Returns is facing competition against Sudeep’s Vikrant Rona which has been released as a pan-Indian film. The collections of Sudeep’s film in the Hindi belt dropped when it clashed against the Mohit Suri film.

Ek Villain Returns did not impress the critics much. The Indian Express’ Shubhra Gupta gave the film one star and called it a “new low.” “Eight years after the original comes the sequel, ‘Ek Villain Returns’, in which the theme, ‘every story has a villain’ gets a refresh. This time around, the story expands its base with two male characters ricocheting between being hero and villain, one masked, another struggling to find his real face. There could have been something to this idea, that everyone has elements of hero and villain within and the one that comes up top depends upon our circumstances. But a disjointed plot and pedestrian performances do not an effective film make,” the review read.