Maalik box office prediction: Rajkummar Rao's mass turn sells just 6500 tickets, to open at 50% of Bhool Chuk Maaf, Jaat

Maalik box office prediction: Rajkummar Rao's film sold only 6500 tickets in advance bookings at the national cinema chains, indicating a bad opening day.

Rajkummar Rao is going all massy with his new film, Maalik, which released in theatres this weekend. The film, directed by Pulkit, sees the actor as a ruthless gangster, in quite a break from his usual small-town boy image. Given the genre and the scale, the film was expected to make a strong opening, but that does not seem to be the case, judging by early trends.

Maalik box office prediction: Rajkummar Rao's film is set for a slow start.

Maalik advance booking trends

The makers of Maalik opened advance bookings for the film on Wednesday afternoon, a day and a half before the release. But by Thursday evening, the film was crawling at the ticket window. It sold only 6,500 tickets in the three national cinema chains—PVR, Inox, and Cinepolis. This is a rather low figure. Even with some increase in sales overnight, the advance booking for Maalik remained dismal, not painting a pretty picture for the Rajkummar Rao film.

Maalik box office prediction

The low advance booking numbers mean that Maalik will not get the bumper mass opening that Rajkummar Rao may have been hoping for. According to trade insiders, the film is looking at a ₹3-4 crore opening. And these are quite optimistic estimates. More conservative estimates put the film's domestic opening day haul at under ₹2 crore. Either way, the film is nowhere close to the last mid-budget mass action film - Sunny Deol's Jaat. That film earned ₹9 crore on the opening day. Even Rajkummar's previous release - the time loop comedy Bhool Chuk Maaf - opened at ₹7.2 crore. Maalik may not even manage half of either film's box office.

About Maalik

Directed by Pulkit, Maalik stars Rajkummar, Manushi Chhillar, Prosenjit Chatterjee, and Saurabh Shukla in important roles. The action thriller marks Rajkummar's maiden foray into the genre. Trade insiders say that the film needs to cross ₹60-70 crore domestically to be a hit, a tall order if it does not take a strong start.