Rs 20 crore box office opening for Mirzapur: The Movie? Munna Bhaiya effect is real

Mirzapur: The Movie has opened advance booking with strong early sales across multiplex chains and BookMyShow. The response suggests the franchise's OTT audience could turn up in theatres despite its adults-only certificate.

In Short

• Mirzapur: The Movie tracks Rs 20-25 crore nett opening in India
• Advance bookings sold over 26,000 tickets with Rs 1.9 crore gross early
• The film outpaces the recent Awarapan 2 in advance ticket sales

Mirzapur: The Movie looks like it has already found its box-office rhythm, and it hasn't even released yet. The numbers are doing the talking. According to the latest report by trade website Sacnilk, the film, which brings back fan-favourite Munna Bhaiya (Divyenndu Sharma), is tracking towards an opening of Rs 20-25 crore nett in India.

Advance booking opened on Monday, and the response has been anything but slow. As per the trade tracker, Mirzapur: The Movie has already sold more than 20,000 tickets across the major national multiplex chains. The latest numbers put its opening-day sales at 26,398 tickets across 2,971 shows nationwide, translating into an advance gross of Rs 83.67 lakh. Once block seats are factored in, that figure shoots up to Rs 1.9 crore within a few hours.

And here's where it gets interesting.

Mirzapur: The Movie vs Awarapan

At its current pace, Mirzapur: The Movie is moving faster than Awarapan 2, which released recently and starred Emraan Hashmi. That's a fairly remarkable comparison for a film that is still a few days away from hitting theatres.

Then there's BookMyShow, where the interest is equally hard to miss. More than 15,000 users have registered their interest in watching the film on the platform in the last 24 hours alone. And that curiosity appears to be translating into actual ticket sales. Between 10 and 11 am on Monday, around 1,030 tickets were sold in just one hour.

By August 31, BookMyShow bookings had crossed the 17,000 mark, with 17,170 tickets sold on the platform alone.

Put all of that together and an early picture begins to emerge: people aren't just curious about Mirzapur: The Movie, they are actively booking tickets. And that's important because this isn't a brand that needs to introduce itself to the audience.

The Mirzapur fans at work

Mirzapur already has a fan base. A very loyal one. The franchise first arrived on Prime Video in 2018 and quickly became one of the most watched and talked-about Indian shows. Now, its move from streaming to the big screen is being watched for another reason altogether: can a franchise that was born on OTT actually get its audience to leave the couch and buy a theatre ticket?

The numbers suggest it can. The show's streaming figures have certainly given the makers reason to be confident. Season 2 reportedly clocked an estimated 32.5 million views, while Season 3 followed with nearly 30.8 million. Those numbers have placed Mirzapur among the top three most-watched Indian web series of all time.

And then there's the A certificate. The Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) has given Mirzapur: The Movie an A (adults-only) rating. But is that really going to hurt its box office? Probably not. If anything, Mirzapur has spent years building an audience that came to OTT precisely for the kind of uncensored, adult storytelling that traditional television couldn't offer.

The 'A'-game of Mirzapur: The Movie

In other words, the A certificate isn't necessarily a deterrent for the franchise's core audience. It is almost part of the brand.

There's another reason the film has managed to generate this kind of anticipation: this isn't simply the Mirzapur series being stretched into a movie.

The film is set in the same universe, but tells a new story. What it does retain are the characters audiences have spent years obsessing over. And yes, that includes characters whose deaths we thought were final. For the big-screen outing, even some of the most iconic faces from the series return.

Leading the cast are Pankaj Tripathi as Akhandanand 'Kaleen Bhaiya' Tripathi, Ali Fazal as Guddu Pandit and Divyenndu Sharma as Munna Tripathi. They are joined by Rasika Dugal, Rajesh Tailang, Sheeba Chaddha, Shweta Tripathi, Shriya Pilgaonkar, Harshita Gaur, Kulbhushan Kharbanda and Abhishek Banerjee.

Gurmmeet Singh directs the film, with Ritesh Sidhwani and Farhan Akhtar producing it under Excel Entertainment, in partnership with Amazon MGM Studios. Mirzapur: The Movie releases in theatres on September 4.

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