Did Liger Work At The Box Office?

When S S Rajamouli's Baahubali franchise had to be established at a pan-India level, Karan Johar and his Dharma Productions came on board to release the film in Hindi across the country.

Later, Farhan Akhtar and Ritesh Sidhwani took it upon themselves to make sure that Prashant Neel's KGF saw an all-India penetration.

Now, when it seemed like Vijay Deveraknonda could be the next big thing for a pan-India audience, Karan Johar chose to take a different route.

Instead of releasing one of the actor's dubbed Telugu films in Hindi, he chose to make an original bilingual instead.

This is where Director Puri Jagannadh and Co-Producer Charmee Kaur joined hands with Karan and Liger was conceptualised.

The content of the film is a matter of discussion, but from the intent perspective, the idea was to go all out in terms of making sure that Liger was talked about.

Right from the time of announcement to its eventual release, there was a lot of hype created around Vijay Deverakonda in the role of an MMA fighter.

Though Dharma Productions has backed one such film already -- Akshay Kumar and Sidharth Malhotra's Brothers 00 this time it was going to be a 'cross-breed' affair. So the sensibilities of south and north cinema came together with Puri Jagannadh calling the shots, and the film was marketed and promoted quite aggressively with Vijay and his leading lady Ananya Panday traveling across the country.

Such are the desperate times today that the aggressive marketing was done to ensure at least a decent opening at the pan-India level.

Did it work?

The Hindi version opened at Rs 4.50 crore (Rs 45 million) on Friday. These days, this is being considered as decent enough because only eight other Hindi films have managed a better opening in 2022: Bhool Bhulaiyaa 2, Bachchan Pandey, Samrat Prithviraj, Gangubai Kathiawadi, Shamshera, JugJugg Jeeyo, Ek Villain Returns and Heropanti 2.

In fact, films like The Kashmir Files, Attack - Part 1, Jayeshbhai Jordaar, Runway 34 and Jersey had opened way lesser.

The Kashmir Files, of course, went on to make history.

Liger's weekend collections, unfortunately, fell and this time, it was because of the film's content.

Despite Vijay doing well in his part and playing it with conviction, it's the overall narrative saw mixed reactions.

As a result, if one adds Thursday's paid preview numbers of Rs 1.25 crore (Rs 12.5 million) to the weekend collection, it amounts to about Rs 14 crore (Rs 140 million).

From here, what needs to be seen is how the weekdays turn out.

From the release perspective, everything was done right to pitch Liger on this weekend since there is no theatrical release on the coming Friday.

Since Dharma Productions is releasing Brahmastra a week later on September 9, they have managed a gap of two weeks between two of their films.

Now it all depends upon whether there is some sort of stability on the weekdays because two open weeks would be worth it only if Liger manages to hang in there as well.