Aamir Khan's Dangal creates Rs 2000 crore club

Entertainment Desk: Aamir Khan’s Dangal is still wrestling at the Chinese box office and going by the reports, emerging victorious. On Monday, the Aamir Khan social drama created Rs 2000-crore club and became its sole occupant.

According to a report by Forbes, on its 53rd day of release in China, Dangal made Rs 2.5 crore ($390,000) at the China box office taking its worldwide total to Rs 2000 crore. Dangal has reached such a milestone that it is no longer competing against Indian films, its eyes are set on big records made abroad.

The Forbes report reads, “It (Dangal) stands alone as the leggiest film in Chinese box office history with an opening day multiple of 86x. The closest contender to that record is Zootopia—like Dangal, incidentally, a film funded and distributed by Disney—but Dangal left Zootopia in its dust long ago when it surpassed the animated family film’s multiple of 69x.”

What’s interesting is to know that Dangal has left behind International hits like Captain America: Civil War, xXx: Return Of Xander Cage, Transformers: Dark Of The Moon, The Jungle Book, Kung Fu Panda 3 etc and is eyeing on world’s biggest blockbuster Avatar and Chris Pratt’s Jurassic World respectively at China box office.

However, with just a few more days before itsDangal’s distribution authorisation in China expires, it is unlikely if the film would cross the benchmarks set by Avatar and Jurassic World. However, it would not be surprising if the Nitesh Tewari directorial mints a few more millions at the box office before it finally takes retirement from this numbers game.

But Aamir Khan film has got some rare milestones already — Dangal has become the fifth highest-grossing non-English film in history, the highest-grossing live actions sports movie of 2017, and the biggest non-Hollywood import ever released in China. In rest of the world, including India where Dangal released in December 2016, the film earned Rs 745 crore. It was China which gave the film its real momentum as people could relate to the story of a father pushing his two daughters to excel at sports and win laurels for the country.

With the same patriarchal set-up, India and China share the mores of respecting your parents and following their beliefs. Dangal also brought unprecedented popularity for Aamir in China. While the actor’s films such as 3 Idiots had done well in China earlier, he now is more popular than PM Narendra Modi in China according to social media followers on Weibo, sort of a Chinese Twitter.

Agencies


risingbd/Dhaka/Jun 27, 2017/Nasim