As the film releases today and gets set to smash box office records, it has now come to light that the action-drama will have the widest release for a post-pandemic film. According to boxofficeindia.com, the Hindi dubbed version of the Yash starrer has become the first to enjoy a release on over 4000 screens.
An estimated total of about 4,500 screens have been allotted to the Hindi version of the film which now makes it the widest post-pandemic release and the fifth widest release of all time.
This has even beaten Akshay Kumar‘s ‘Sooryavanshi’ that was released across 3,600 screens. Alia Bhatt‘s ‘Gangubai Kathiawadi’ also released across 3,500 screens while Ranveer Singh’s ’83 got 3,400 screens.
2022’s biggest blockbuster, SS Rajamouli’s ‘RRR’ released across still fewer screens. The film which earned over Rs 1000 crore at the box office, released across 3,200 screens.
These numbers indicate that films can now hope to achieve pre-pandemic numbers and much bigger releases.
‘KGF’ director Prashanth Neel, who is returning with the second chapter of the Yash-starrer, said that the team never thought the first part of the movie would resonate so well with the audiences across the country.
Written and directed by Neel, ‘KGF’, which stands for Kolar Gold Fields (in Karnataka), is a tale of Rocky (Yash), an orphan who rises from poverty and becomes the ‘king’ of a gold mine.
The two-part multilingual film, which had its first chapter released in 2018, turned out to be the highest-grossing movie of the Kannada industry.
The director believes that the human element within the story, is an important aspect to make a massy entertainer. He believes this may have worked in the film’s favour. “The human element is the first thing that we should put in a big movie. When you talk about larger-than-life movies, that human element binds everything together. Like, the way the characters behave should look human to you. We put in a lot of prominences to this (human element) while filming the first and second chapter,” the director told PTI.
The movie traces the history of gold mining and the mafia running it in Karnataka’s Kolar region. If the pre-release buzz is to be believed, the film has already crossed a whopping 2.5 million tickets in advance sales. It is followed by another film from South India, the Tamil movie ‘Beast’, which has crossed 1.8 million ticket sales.
