Will the makers of Dhurandhar utilise the demand in Telugu?

Aditya Dhar made his directorial debut with Uri: The Surgical Strike in 2019 and created ripples across the country at a time when the pan-India market was not yet a big thing. After six years, he returned with his second directorial, Dhurandhar, which released in theatres on Friday, December 5. Starting with moderate expectations, the film is now performing exceptionally well at the box office.

Dhurandhar has performed better on weekdays than on its first weekend, a clear sign of how strong the film’s run is and where it is headed. So far, it has completed eight days at the box office, with the eighth day emerging as the highest single-day ticket sales for the film. Second Friday BookMyShow sales were close to 8.4 lakh tickets, creating an all-time record and beating Pushpa 2: The Rule, which sold around 7.8 lakh tickets, followed by Chhaava with 7.1 lakh and Kantara Chapter 1 with 6.1 lakh.

All of this has been achieved with just a single version in Hindi. Whenever a film from another language performs massively at the box office and becomes a talking point, Telugu audiences are usually the first to get curious about watching it in a Telugu dub. While some moviegoers are adjusting with subtitles and contributing to good occupancies in Hyderabad, there is still strong demand for a Telugu version.

The film has already completed one week at the box office, and with no notable releases lined up around December 19, it could be a good date to release the film in South Indian languages, especially Telugu and Tamil. Earlier this year, a similar scenario played out with Chhaava, which was dubbed into Telugu in later weeks and went on to perform reasonably well. Dhurandhar is produced by Jio Studios, and given the demand, someone from Telugu cinema has reportedly approached the team for a Telugu release. However, how soon they manage to bring it to theatres will matter.