Cinema exhibitors are betting big on actor Prabhas’ epic mythological film ‘Adipurush’ to bring back footfalls after a challenging fourth quarter that witnessed a drop in footfalls due to the underwhelming performances of films barring ‘Pathaan’ and ‘Avatar: The Way of Water’.

PVR Inox Co-CEO Gautam Dutta said the multiplex chain has received a stupendous response to the pre-bookings of ‘Adipurush’. “The advance bookings for the first day of the release have been doubling with each passing day after we clocked over 1.50 lakh admissions yesterday,” Dutta said.

He said the film is truly a made-for-the-big-screen experience that would appeal to all age groups. “We are witnessing maximum bookings for the Telugu version after Hindi. While senior citizens would prefer to watch this movie due to its mythological angle, children would show interest due to VFX,” Dutta noted.

Made at an estimated budget of Rs 500 crore, the multilingual film released today in Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, and Kannada across 5,000 screens in India.

BookMyShow COO Ashish Saksena said the advance sales for the film crossed 1.5 million tickets on the platform. "While the Telugu version is naturally leading the charts on the platform in terms of ticket sales, Hindi is a close second. The 3D format is the most preferred format of watching the film on the big screen with over 72% of movie-goers opting for the immersive movie-watching experience," he stated.

Elara Securities SVP Karan Taurani said Adipurush will come as a respite for cinema exhibitors who have been facing dwindling occupancy levels, which are still below pre-pandemic levels. He noted that The Kerala Story has been the only silver lining for the industry.

"We expect a strong opening day in South India, as net box office opening there could be in the range of Rs 50–60 crore for dubbed languages, whereas Hindi too would be healthy at Rs 20 crore. In terms of lifetime domestic box office, we expect a net box office collection of Rs 350 crore to Rs 400 crore," he added.

Junglee Pictures CEO Amrita Pandey said June has always been a phenomenal release period over the years for youth and family movies. "We are now looking forward to the June and July theatrical releases performing well at the box office. The theatrical admissions for Zara Hatke Zara Bachke have been extremely encouraging for the industry."

Film business expert Girish Johar expects Adipurush to generate high footfalls across languages since this is the first major tentpole film that will be released after Pathaan.

"Another factor going in the film's favour is the fact that this is the holiday season for school kids. The story is deeply rooted in Indian culture, so it will attract family audiences," he said.

Johar also stated that the audience's preference for watching the kind of movies in theatres has totally changed. "Audiences are willing to watch content-driven films in theatres." They are not bothered about the genre or the cast of the film."

Dutta said that the recent trend of multilingual content being popular among pan-India audiences is holding true. "We would continue to see more of such movies doing well on the national scene," he noted.

According to a GroupM-Ormax Media report, the gross box-office collection stood at Rs 10,637 crore in 2022.