One a comedy franchisee, the other retelling the horror of the pandemic, audience was in for a choice with Fukrey 3 and The Vaccine War releasing on September 28. While Fukrey 3 opened to a positive Rs 8.82 crore number at the box office, Vivek Agnihotri's film could not even garner a crore. However, the weekend helped both films get a better footfall even with Shah Rukh Khan's Jawan running to packed theatres. As per industry tracker Sacnilk, The Vaccine War collected Rs 2.20 crore on Sunday, a growth of almost 48 percent from the previous day's numbers. This brought the total earnings of four days to Rs 5.70. The film saw a 21.34 percent occupancy in the Hindi market with the most crowd coming in the evening shows, followed by night, afternoon, and morning. On the other hand, the Mrighdeep Singh Lamba-directed comedy netted Rs 15.25 crore on day 4. After Sunday collection, the film has earned Rs 43.55 crore. With Monday a national holiday, the film is likely to cross the Rs 50 crore mark. Fukrey 3 had almost 40 percent occupancy in the Hindi-speaking market with evening and night shows getting more than 50 percent footfall. The film stars Pankaj Tripathi, Richa Chadha, Pulkit Samrat, Varun Sharma and Manjot Singh. Riding high on the success of last year's Kashmir Files, Vivek Agnihotri's film was expected to do better numbers. In an interview, he addressed about box office reports stating that his film got a 'lukewarm' response. In an interview with Siddharth Kannan, he said, "Lukewarm response matlab unhone ye socha ki bhai jitne log Playboy khareedte utne log Geeta bhi khareedte hein. Aisa nahi hota he. Aisa thodi hota he? Duniya ki reality bilkul different hoti he (Do they think that the number of people who buy Playboy magazine are the same as the ones who buy Geeta. That doesn't happen! The reality of this world is very different)." The filmmaker further added, "The world is very different. Among the ones that went to see the film, almost 90% of them are feeling elated. you won't find a single negative review there. Everybody is saying, 'Oh my god! This is such a wonderful film!' It gives so much laughter, and so much of tears, and in the end, we come out with pride. We learned so much from the film. He added that these reports are based on negative PR. The Vaccine War stars Anupam Kher, Nana Patekar, Pallavi Joshi, Raima Sen and Girija Oak among others.
