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Both 'Coolie' and 'War 2' were impacted by mixed audience reception, but the Rajinikanth-starrer has still put up a solid global gross.
The highly anticipated Independence Day weekend at the box-office has seen mixed results as both the mighty releases, Rajinikanth-led Coolie and Hrithik Roshan, JR NTR-starrer War 2, have recorded underwhelming trending. Despite a record-breaking start scripting history, Coolie couldn't maintain its glorious opening, while War 2 failed to pack a punch in the four-day extended holiday period.
Filmmaker Lokesh Kanagaraj's Coolie made history by becoming the highest day-one grosser for a Tamil film worldwide, raking in over ₹151 crore on Thursday. In India, the film netted an opening day of ₹65 crore (including Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, and Hindi versions), followed by nearly ₹55 crore on Friday (Independence Day).
On Saturday, the action-thriller recorded ₹39 crore, followed by its weakest day of ₹35 crore on Sunday, reported industry tracker Sacnilk. The India total for the film is nearly ₹194.25 crore.
According to global estimates by Comscore for the weekend of August 15-17, Coolie had a fantastic worldwide weekend of ₹396 crore ($45.34 million) gross, ahead of the $43.40 million collected by Weapons, the Chinese animated film Nobody ($32 million), and the Japanese anime Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle ($37 million). These are, however, estimates, and the actual figures might vary.
For War 2, the global estimates by Comscore pegged it to be around ₹ 275.74 crore. The Ayan Mukerji directorial had a start of ₹52 crore all-India net, with its Hindi version leading with ₹29 crore.
The film then recorded a huge jump on Friday, netting ₹57.35 crore (its best day in the weekend) with the Hindi version recording a whopping ₹44.5 crore. On Saturday, War 2 recorded an all-India net of ₹33.25 crore, followed by a Sunday of ₹31 crore, including Hindi, Tamil and Telugu versions.
The Telugu version, despite the presence of actor JR NTR, one of the major movie stars in Andhra Pradesh-Telangana, had only one day where the collections were over ₹20 crore, as it dipped to ₹12 crore on Friday and plummeted to single digits on Saturday-Sunday. The domestic total of War 2 is around ₹174 crore.
Both War 2 and Coolie will now record low numbers as the weekday kicks in, and the trending now will decide their lifetime collections. The worldwide gross of Coolie will paint a better picture for the film, as India figures have been disappointing, and help it to cross ₹500 crore globally.