It happened just three weeks back and it’s happening all over again. RRR (Hindi) came, it roared and turned out to be a superhit outside the south as well. Now just three weeks after the film’s release, KGF - Chapter 2 (Hindi) has arrived and is set to be an even bigger blockbuster. The film started at Rs 53.95 crore on its Thursday release and then held on very strongly on Friday (Rs 46.79 crore) and Saturday (Rs 42.90 crore) as well. With Rs 143.64 crore in its kitty already. The film is touted to cross Rs50 crore again today and then enter 200 Crore Club tomorrow.
It’s no more an aberration but a trend now that South films are here to stay. The trend started with Pushpa (Hindi) in December 2021, and has sustained. Moreover, if they are tent-pole affairs that have been marketed currently and consistently right through the making, as has been the case with KGF - Chapter 2 and RRR, then sky is the limit.
Yes, Baahubali - The Beginning was a blockbuster in Hindi, too. As was its sequel Baahubali - The Conclusion which was an all-time blockbuster - it is still the highest grossing Hindi film, with Rs 511 crore in earnings. Post that, however, there was silence for dubbed south films and though 2.0 (Hindi) was a hit, it fell short of the Rs 200 crore (bringing in Rs 189.55 crore). The film had Bollywood superstar Akshay Kumar in a role equal to that of leading man Rajinikanth.
Incidentally, the only other south film to have done well in Hindi post that was KGF - Chapter One. It was also the first Kannada film dubbed in Hindi to take on a major Bollywood release (Shah Rukh Khan’s Zero released on the same day) - KGF still emerged on top. However, apart from these films, there was no real threat that was felt from south dubbed films.
After all, 2021 itself saw the release of Hindi dubbed version of Vijay’s Master which flopped at the box office. Then earlier this year, Ajith’s Valimai too didn’t find any takers in Hindi. Here it is still understandable that there wasn’t much hype to go with the dubbed release. However, Prabhas’ Radhe Shyam was a bilingual and still the Hindi version was a disaster at Rs19.30 crore in box office collections, and that when the leading man had delivered a biggie with Saaho doing quite well in Hindi.
However, what these movies couldn’t do, the Hindi versions of Pushpa and RRR have done, and with style. The Allu Arjun-starrer started on a slow note but went on to garner a century and that too during the pandemic. It's final total stood at Rs 108.50 crore. As for RRR, it is has crossed the Rs 250 crore mark just in Hindi - it is now the second-highest Hindi-dubbed grosser after Baahubali: The Conclusion. It will likely eventually go past the Rs 270 crore mark. However, the manner in which KGF - Chapter 2 (Hindi) is going, it will cross this number by the end of the week.
This was expected from KGF - Chapter 2, which had been garnering a lot of attention since its announcement. The craze to watch Yash on the big screen as Rocky bhai is real amongst the pan-India audience. By beating the likes of War (biggest first day) and Baahubali - The Conclusion (biggest first weekend), it has already established its supremacy and is now in contention to score the biggest first week as well.
While Bollywood indeed has its own event films in the pipeline, rest assured the ones that come from the south can’t be ignored any more in weeks and months to come.
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