‘Kalki 2898 AD’ pre-sales hit INR 100 Crore..!!!!

nikhil@whatthefuss.in June 27, 2024June 27, 2024 Amitabh Bachchan, Deepika Padukone, Dulquer Salmaan, Kalki 2898 AD, Kalki 2898 AD Advance sales, Kalki 2898 AD opening day, Kalki 2898 AD record opening, Kalki 2898 AD Review, Kamal Haasan, Prabhas, Vijya Devarakonda

Nag Ashwin’s epic sci-fi Kalki 2898 AD seems like rocking well at the pre-sales column worldwide as the final numbers is close to INR 100 Crore! The advance premiers at North American Box-office has truly set the craze in motion with an All-time record at the territory. In the domestic circuits, Andhra Pradesh/Telangana (AP/TS), which is the original market, occupies the top slot while Kerala comes at the bottom in terms of numbers generated so far.

Domestic Circuits

AP/TS generated a final pre-sale gross of over INR 35 Crore from 4000 plus shows, registering over 12 Lakh admits, far exceeding the rest of the zones combined. There is about 83% occupancy in the area within over 433 screens in the two states combined. The most important fact is that the Average ticket price is roughly around INR 300 on the first day in the home states. Karnataka comes second with a gross of over INR 6 Crore from 1500 shows at an occupancy of 34%. The film has sold over 1.6 lakh at the ticket window. The advance sale at North India circuit comes around INR 5 Crore and posts over 1.6 lakh admits in the whole zone. There is about 11% occupancy in this whole zone with a show count of over 6000.

Kalki 2898 AD has made presales gross somewhat close to INR 3 Crore in Tamil Nadu. The total footfalls in Tamil Nadu are well over 1.6 lakh at an occupancy over 21%. There is also a show count of over 1900 within a total number of 312 screens. Kerala on the other side has made a presale gross of over INR 90 Lakh in total, which is comparatively a lot lower than the other areas. The occupancy rate is at about 17% from a total number of 973 shows in our ‘God’s Own Country’.

International Circuits

The film has an impressive debut in North America Box-office. As per the reports, the film has become the All-Time record opener in the marker in terms of premieres. The advance sale prior to premiere stood at USD 3.15 Million which was just USD 350K short of the highest opening. The advance sale breakup of North American Box-office is as follows.

USA Premieres: USD 2.85M
Canada Premieres: USD 305K

As far as the final premier collections are considered, the total stands at a whooping USD 3.65 Million. The Prabhas starrer has comfortably gone past the final premiere gross of RRR in the market, which was around USD 3.50 Million. This also means that Prabhas has bettered his own record of USD 2.60 Million set by Salaar last year. So now the top 5 All-time record premiers in the North America territory will be:

Kalki 2898 AD ~ USD 3.65 Million
RRR – USD 3.5 Million
Salaar – USD 2.60 Million
Bahubali 2 ~ USD 2.45 Million
Agnyaathavaasi – USD 1.52 Million (offers)

The Rest of the world market is not yet at the best, especially the Gulf markets have heavily underperformed in terms of Advance sales. The pre-sales haven’t even touched the gross of ‘Aadipurush’ and it seems like Kalki 2898 AD will have an opening below the former in this market. So far, the pre-sales are around USD 120K in the Gulf circuits. This is one reason why the film could not breach the prestigious INR 100 Crore mark just with the pre-sales alone.

Final Expectations

Kalki 2898 AD’s scoring at the box office has so far been impressive considering the kind of genre it belongs to. Let’s not forget that we Indians in whole aren’t really that accustomed to enjoying a film in the likes of ‘Dune or Star Wars’ here. Kerala & Gulf territories are prime examples of this and these are the 2 core markets where the impact of the film didn’t hit as hard as many other territories. Of course, Telugu films in generally doesn’t have much strong hold in Kerala as compared to the rest of South (let’s also not forget that this is also that one state which didn’t let Baahubali 2 become an ‘Industry Hit’ while it managed to subdue the rest of Indian cinema) and the debacle in Gulf markets can be attributed to the long list of flops of Prabhas after Bahubali 2 as well as the trailer & promos failing to increase the hype.

In short, even with the prevalent dissatisfaction over the lack of ‘required buzz’, Kalki 2898 AD did manage to make some impact at the box office so far. It is also a commendable achievement considering that the film has also managed to overthrow Salaar, another heavily hyped action film of Prabhas in terms of presales collection (even though we must take into account that Salaar at the same time also had to combat a major clash with Shahrukh Khan’s Dunki).

Fans are hoping for the film to be a major success at the box office with many hoping for Kalki 2898 AD to secure the record for having the highest first day gross and to come at par with or overtake Baahubali 2 itself. The actual fate of the film is left with how the word-of-mouth (WOM) will generate within the audience. Kalki 2898 AD has made its actual roar at the theatres. Don’t forget to miss this epic blaster on your nearby shows.