Vijay Thalapathy’s final film as an actor, Jana Nayagan, has opened to Rs 41 crore net in India on its first day, according to trade tracker Sacnilk. The film releases on July 23 after months of delay over censor issues, a legal fight, and a piracy leak just weeks before its debut. Including taxes, its India gross stands at Rs 48.27 crore, and with another Rs 30 crore coming in from overseas markets, its worldwide opening day total comes to Rs 78,27 crore.
The film ran across more than 13,000 shows in India. The Tamil version brought in the bulk of that, at around Rs 36.50 crore, while the Telugu version added Rs 2.7 crore and the Hindi version Rs 1.75 crore. The Hindi and Telugu numbers came with fairly low occupancy, at 15% and 28% respectively, showing the film’s pull stayed largely limited to Tamil-speaking audiences.
Despite these strong numbers, Jana Nayagan couldn’t beat the opening day collections of Vijay’s own previous films. His 2022 film Beast had opened at Rs 49.30 crore in India, and GOAT opened at Rs 44 crore. Both numbers are higher than what Jana Nayagan managed on Day 1. It also stayed behind Leo, Vijay’s biggest opener, which had collected Rs 64.80 crore on its first day.
The films also missed out on joining the small list of Tamil films that crossed Rs 50 crore net in India on release day, a group that includes Leo, Rajnikanth’s Coolie at Rs 65 crore, and 2.0 at Rs 60.25 crore. That said , Jana Nayagan did move past Vijay’s Sarkar to become the fourth biggest opener of his career in India.
Trade reports suggest the day started strong, with morning shows running houseful, before occupancy eased to around 63-66% later in the day. Advance bookings before release had reportedly crossed Rs 28 crore, making it one of the biggest pre-sale numbers for a Tamil film this year.
Advance booking numbers tell an interesting story of their own. Ticket sales on BookMyShow stayed slow through most of the week, with just 11,770 tickets sold on July 16, before demand suddenly picked up and peaked at around 4.5 lakh tickets on July 22, a day before release. This last-minute rush pushed the film’s total advance pre-sales past 1.18 million tickets worldwide, putting it just behind Jailer and GOAT, and not far off Leo and Coolie, which remain the biggest advance sellers in Tamil cinema history.
The final numbers also fell short of pre-release predictions. Estimations made were that in India opening of around Rs 60 crore and a worldwide Day 1 total near Rs 90 crore, with an opening weekend of Rs 150-180 crore in India alone. The six month release delay and the piracy leak just before the film hit theatres are being pointed to as likely reasons the film fell short of that mark.
Directed by H Vinoth, Jana Nayagan stars Vijay alongside Pooja Hegde, Bobby Deol and Mamitha Baiju, with music by Anirudh Ravichander. The film is an official remake of the Telugu hit Bhagavanth Kesari and follows a former cop who takes on the responsibility of raising a young woman while also fighting a bigger political threat to the country. It is being seen as Vijay’s farewell to acting, arriving after he became Tamil Nadu’s Chief Minister earlier this year following his transition into full time politics.
Made on a reported budget of close to Rs 500 crore, Jana Nayagan carried the weight of being both a major commercial release and a send off to one to Tamil cinema’s biggest stars. While it hasn’t topped his personal records, the opening day numbers still place it among the strongest Tamil releases of the year so far.
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