Sunny Deol is back with his dhaai kilo ka haath in his first pan-India actioner, Jaat. The action adventure, being bankrolled by South’s Mythri Movie Makers, is being billed as Sunny’s Jawan/Sikandar, i.e., his entry into the South market. Since the film follows the success of Gadar 2, expectations are high. Yet, the box office buzz seems to be moderate so far. (Also read: Jaat first reviews are in, Twitter calls Sunny Deol’s film super entertaining: ‘No one showed him like this in 15 years’)
Jaat advance booking report
The advance booking for Jaat ended on Wednesday night, with the Sunny Deol-starrer grossing just ₹2.37 crore in pre-sales for opening day across India, according to Sacnilk. The figure is low, considering the film is being hyped as a pan-India actioner. In contrast, Sunny’s previous film – Gadar 2 – had grossed ₹17.60 crore in advance booking ahead of its release in 2023. Jaat has failed to reach ₹1 crore advance booking in any of the major territories apart from NCR, which should send some alarm bells ringing.
Jaat box office day 1 prediction
But despite the low advance bookings, the one thing that is in Jaat’s favour is that mass actioners generally see high spot bookings, particularly in tier-2 and tier-3 cities. Sunny Deol’s popularity in smaller centres can certainly ensure that. Jaat has earned under ₹2 crore by noon on its opening day (April 10), with trade insiders saying the film can reach ₹10 crore by the end of the day. This would make it Sunny Deol’s second-highest opener, behind Gadar 2. However, the gap between Jaat and Gadar 2 is too wide as the latter opened at a staggering ₹40 crore.
Are Jaat’s box office prospects looking good?
To sum it up, anything under ₹15 crore net in India on day one should be a disappointment for a film of Jaat’s scale. If the film opens at ₹10 crore, as trade experts predict, it will be 40% of Sikandar, the Salman Khan film that opened last Sunday. Given that Sikandar’s opening was considered low, and Jaat stands to open at less than half of that, it is a worrying sign. Moreover, if Jaat stays at the ₹10 crore mark, it will lose to Akshay Kumar’s Sky Force, which opened at ₹12 crore earlier this year. Jaat would then have to depend on some terrific word of mouth to recover.
Directed by Gopichand Malineni in his Hindi debut, Jaat also stars Regina Cassandra, Randeep Hooda, Vineet Kumar Singh, Saiyami Kher, Ramya Krishnan, and Jagapathi Babu.
