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Shah Rukh Khan’s third film of the year, Dunki, arrived in cinema halls on Thursday, amid much fanfare. The first show of the Rajkumar Hirani film in India was at 5:55 am at Mumbai’s iconic single-screen theatre Gaiety Galaxy, and as the visuals from the cinema hall went viral on the internet, it looked nothing less than a celebration. However, throughout the day, the movie didn’t get as much footfall.
Industry tracker Sacnilk reported that Dunki will earn around Rs 30 crore on Thursday, according to early estimates. In the morning shows, the film recorded an occupancy of 26.45% and the afternoon shows had an occupancy of 21.77 %. The overall Hindi occupancy of the movie was around 24.11 %. It needs to be noted that the SRK starrer has arrived in cinema halls on a working weekday. It might pick up pace over the upcoming Christmas weekend.
However, the other hiccup for Dunki would be Prashanth Neel’s Salaar, which will be released in theatres on Friday. Even before its release, the film is posing a tough challenge to Dunki at the ticket counters. Before its opening day, the movie has already done a business of Rs 35.23 crore from the sale of 16,83,871 tickets.
Ahead of Dunki’s release, film trade expert Sreedhar Pillai had told indianexpress.com that Dunki won’t get as much traction in South India as Salaar. He said, “Since Dunki is a family-oriented, emotional film, it will not get that many screens and will be limited to multiplexes as it does not have Telugu or Tamil dubbed versions.”
Dunki has opened to a polarised response from critics and the audience. The Indian Express’ Shubhra Gupta has called the film a “bore”. She mentioned in her review, “In the 161-minute run-time of the Rajkumar Hirani film, I was hard put to find anything that made me feel. Even Shah Rukh Khan’s Hardy comes off as working too hard for not enough pay-off.”
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