Aaraattu (short for Neyyattinkara Gopante Aaraattu) had a decent weekend at the box office. The Mohanlal starrer action comedy grossed Rs. 10 crores approx during the opening frame. It had a good start on Friday and then didn’t crash on Saturday as was feared given the mixed word of mouth from the audiences. The collections saw an uptick on Sunday with around 10 per cent jump.
The day-wise box office collections of Aaraattu at the Indian box office are as follows:
Friday - Rs. 4 crores
Saturday - Rs. 2.85 crores
Sunday - Rs. 3.15 crores
Total - Rs. 10 crores
The film collected Rs. 8.60 crores approx in Kerala during the weekend. The first three days numbers are the biggest of the year, just above Hridayam which raked in Rs. 8.49 crores last month in its three days. However, Hridayam first three days included business from Monday instead of Sunday, as cinemas were closed on the holiday due to CoVID guidelines. The weekend box office is slightly less than what one would expect from a Mohanlal commercial entertainer, but if the film can maintain collections at decent levels, especially during the first weekdays, it can still become an economically safe venture.
Outside Kerala, the business was underwhelming with just Rs. 1.40 crores from the weekend in rest of India. That's roughly half of what Marakkar did in December last year. The overseas numbers will be slow to come since the distributor of the biggest market Gulf has conventionally embargoed the numbers, and this is expected to be the case with this film as well. Among the reported markets, North America weekend was around $100K. More on overseas as and when received.
Update: Aaraattu grossed a low $1.20 million (Rs. 9 crores) overseas during the opening weekend with $825K from Gulf. Worldwide opening weekend gross is Rs. 19 crores approx, which is around what Marakkar did on its opening day.
