It was a good Thursday at the Indian box-office as all three major releases—Nani's HIT: The Third Case, Suriya's Retro, and Ajay Devgn's Raid 2— delivered a solid opening, amassing nearly ₹60 crores collectively on day one.
Directed by Sailesh Kolanu, HIT: The Third Case is the third instalment in the intense crime drama. The Telugu film recorded an impressive day one of ₹19 crore, as posted by industry tracker Sacnilk. The collections of the Nani starrer are thrice that of the Adivi Sesh-starrer HIT: The Second Case, which had netted ₹6.4 crore on its first day in 2022.
HIT: The Third Case has not only recorded the biggest opening day of the franchise, but has also given Nani the second-highest day one of his career after his 2022 Dasara that collected ₹23.2 crore.
There were fireworks even with Retro, the Karthik Subbaraj directorial featuring Suriya and Pooja Hegde. The Tamil film opened to a fantastic ₹19.25 crore all-India nett. Though the film has opened to less than Suriya's last film Kanguva (which earned ₹28 crore last year) Retro has better word-of-mouth which would help it have a good extended weekend.
Another film that is riding on decent to good audience reception is Raid 2. The Raj Kumar Gupta directorial, a sequel to his own 2018 film, surpassed trade expectations as it opened on Thursday, which was a partial holiday.
According to the makers, the film, starring Devgn, Riteish Deshmukh and Vaani Kapoor, clocked ₹19.71 crore on day one. Produced by Bhushan Kumar, Kumar Mangat Pathak, Abhishek Pathak and Krishan Kumar, Raid 2 is expected to see a drop on Friday, as it is a working day, but will then show a surge on Saturday and Sunday. If the film holds well, it is likely to record an extended weekend of around ₹60 to 70 crore.
