Ajith’s Mankatha Is Shaking K-Town, Vijay’s Records in Danger?

It has been a disappointing Pongal for Kollywood box office as none of the films that released during the festival week managed to impress moviegoers. The biggest setback was the indefinite postponement of Thalapathy Vijay’s highly awaited farewell film Jana Nayagan. 

Interestingly, the re-release of Ajith’s cult blockbuster action thriller ‘Mankatha’ has revived a festive like atmosphere in theatres all over Tamil Nadu with a fantastic opening this Friday. After 15 years, the Venkat Prabhu directional returned to the big screens and the response has been quite phenomenal as the film took a record breaking start.

By selling over 100K tickets online on BookMyShow on the first day, Mankatha dethroned Thalapathy Vijay’s iconic hit Gilli and took the first place among re releases. The film has also effortlessly outperformed other recent re-releases like Sachein and Padayappa. 

Going with the current trend at the box office, trade analysts predict that the Ajith-starrer has the potential to perform exceptionally well at the box office and script history by surpassing the re-release collections of Vijay’s Ghilli which stands at the first place with 26.50 crores gross. 

Made on a budget of 24 Crores and released in 2011, Mankatha was a memorable landmark outing for Ajith because it was his 50th film. It emerged as one of the biggest hits in Ajith’s career.

In the film, he plays Vinayak Mahadevan, a suspended police officer who teams up with a gang of criminals to pull over a major heist involving illegal betting money. Ajith’s idiosyncrasies in this grey character and the plot twists with racy narration made it a roaring box office hit as audiences lapped up the film bigtime. 

Social media has been abuzz with videos and pictures from the theatres, capturing fans celebrating the high moments in the film and Ajith’s stupendous screen presence.