It’s worth noting that both ‘Gadar 2’ and ‘Byomkesh O Durgo Rohoshyo’ were released on August 11th, during the Independence Day weekend. ‘Gadar 2’ had already performed admirably at the box office, crossing the coveted 500 crore rupees mark. However, even this success had to yield to the colossal storm that was Shah Rukh Khan’s ‘Jawan’.
‘Jawan’ stormed into Bengal with approximately 1200 shows, some of which even began in the early hours of the morning. Nearly every show on that Thursday was houseful, signaling an unprecedented demand. Theatres, recognizing this trend, were considering increasing the number of shows for Friday, capitalizing on their capacity.
In contrast, ‘Gadar 2’ had previously enjoyed 122 shows across West Bengal until Wednesday. However, on Thursday, the film featuring Sunny Deol and Amisha Patel could only secure 22 shows. This dramatic decline in numbers was directly attributed to the overwhelming demand for Shah Rukh Khan’s ‘Jawan’.
Satadeep Saha, the proprietor of Ajanta Cinema, remarked, ‘Gadar 2’ was doing well, but we had to replace it with ‘Jawan’ due to the incredible demand. This is the first time we began the day with a 6.40 am show. We scheduled 11 shows throughout the day, and we have no more capacity to screen anything else.”
Dev’s ‘Byomkesh O Durgo Rohoshyo’, another film released on August 11th, also witnessed a decline in the number of shows, albeit it had performed moderately well at the box office.
Meanwhile, Shah Rukh Khan’s ‘Jawan’ made an electrifying debut, amassing a staggering 75 crore rupees net in Hindi, Tamil, and Telugu on its release day. This remarkable achievement established ‘Jawan’ as the highest opening-day grosser of all time, surpassing Shah Rukh’s own ‘Pathaan’, which previously held the record by a significant margin of 18 crore rupees. ‘Pathaan’, directed by Siddharth Anand, had collected 57 crore rupees on its opening day.
