Adipurush, Om Raut’s controversial adaptation of the Hindu epic Ramayana is rapidly collapsing at the box office with an unimpressive performance after massive criticism by Hindus who slammed the movie for insulting Hindu Gods. The movie which was off to a great start with 200 crore in its first weekend raked only 10 crore on June 20. It experienced a startling drop of 75% on Monday and a subsequent decline on the next day.
It reportedly grossed 10 crore nett on Tuesday (across all languages), with its Hindi portion accounting for merely 5 to 6 crore. An industry tracker, Sacnilk, estimated that Adipurush minted 10.80 crores in total. Its occupancy in Hindi was approximately 11.16 per cent. T-Series announced that the film has made 375 crores worldwide on Tuesday.
The multilingual project’s global box office performance was also weak. It clocked 17.93 crores on Tuesday, following the first-day total of 140 crores internationally, per film industry observer Manobala Vijayabalan. Less than 120 crore Hindi nett in box office receipts for the movie has effectively ended its run. The movie allegedly cost more than 500 crores for its production, however, its global box office revenue has not yet reached 400 crores.
#Adipurush WW Box Office
— Manobala Vijayabalan (@ManobalaV) June 21, 2023
Day 1 – ₹ 136.84 cr
Day 2 – ₹ 81.21 cr
Day 3 – ₹ 85.36 cr
Day 4 – ₹ 24.05 cr
Day 5 – ₹ 17.93 cr
Total – ₹ 345.39 cr#Prabhas
While Salman Khan’s last Eid release Kisi Ka Bhai Kisi Ki Jaan (which generated just under 100 crore and failed) has been surpassed by Adipurush, the T-Series movie will now find it difficult to top the studio’s own co-production Tu Jhooti Main Makkaar. The rom-com with Ranbir Kapoor and Shraddha Kapoor in the lead roles fetched 149 crore in March.
One of the most expensive Indian films, Adipurush which was released on 16 June to negative reviews is ‘based’ on Valmiki’s Ramayana. Written and directed by Om Raut and produced by T-Series, it features Prabhas as Raghava, Saif Ali Khan as Lankesh, Kriti Sanon as Janaki, Sunny Singh as Shesh and Devdatta Nage as Bajrang. It was shot simultaneously in Hindi and Telugu languages.
Controversy around Adipurush
The 3D project has been in the headlines due to its revered subject ever since the makers announced its inception. The excitement soon turned into disappointment after its teaser was released. After the extreme backlash to the visual effects and CGI, its budget was increased to 500 crores from 400 crores to improve and enhance the visual effects, CGI, lighting and colour grading. The makers also pushed back the original release date from January to fix the issues pointed out.
However, when it finally made its way to the theatres it proved to be a huge letdown, largely owing to the colloquial dialogues penned by Manoj Muntashir Shukla, the performance and outfits of the actors, the lousy storyline, the awful VFX, the poor direction and most importantly the deviation from the source material.
The low numbers seem to be a result of the negative word of mouth against the film. Adipurush has been slammed for its dialogues and for giving a colloquial twist to the sacred Ramayana. There have been calls for a ban on the movie by several Hindu outfits, other organisations as well as audiences for hurting the religious sentiments of Hindus.
Manoj Muntashir’s bizarre justification
Manoj Muntashir informed that the unflattering dialogues in Adipurush will be changed after the massive backlash. He had initially defended the same but had to concede to the wishes of the public. He also appeared on several media platforms and claimed that the film is not based on Ramayana but rather just draws inspiration from it. Notably, he and the other members of the Adipurush team have previously repeatedly declared that the movie has its roots in the holy scripture.
Additionally, he made an attempt to shift responsibility for his terrible writing onto the general people by alleging that Adipurush used such terminology to make Ramayana comprehensible and relatable to the younger generation which further infuriated the masses.
Om Raut also came forward in defence of his movie and expressed his happiness over the initial box-office success and remarked that he was super proud of the results. He even went so far as to charge that only fools claim to fully understand Ramayana. Interestingly, no other cast member has yet commented on Adipurush or its unfavourable reception.
