Haiwaan, reuniting Akshay Kumar and Saif Ali Khan on screen for the first time in years, opened to roughly Rs 3 crore net in India on Day 1 — a modest start that trade trackers are already ranking among Akshay Kumar's weakest post-pandemic openers, with occupancy around 11% across more than 7,000 shows.
How weak was Haiwaan's opening, exactly?
The numbers are fairly stark for a film led by two established stars. India net collection landed around Rs 3 crore, with gross closer to Rs 3.60 crore domestically and roughly Rs 1 crore overseas, putting the worldwide Day 1 gross at approximately Rs 4.60 crore. Trade reports have placed this among the five lowest Day 1 collections of Akshay Kumar's post-pandemic career specifically — a notable marker given the film was positioned around the genuine curiosity of seeing Kumar and Saif Ali Khan share the screen again after a long gap.
Why did a film with two major stars open this soft?
A few factors are being cited together rather than any single explanation. Haiwaan is a Hindi adaptation of director Priyadarshan's own 2016 Malayalam thriller Oppam, which starred Mohanlal — meaning the film entered with the added challenge of being a remake rather than fresh original material, even with a different approach to the story than a scene-by-scene copy. It's also releasing directly into Mirzapur: The Movie's continued box office dominance, which has held unusually strong through its second week rather than fading — leaving less available audience and screen attention for a new release to capture in the same window.
How does this fit Akshay Kumar's recent box office pattern?
Akshay Kumar's output has been genuinely inconsistent at the box office over the past few years, alternating between strong openers and soft ones with little obvious pattern connecting the two. Films positioned around genuine star-pairing curiosity, like this reunion with Saif Ali Khan, have historically been expected to at least clear a respectable opening regardless of the film's other qualities — the fact that Haiwaan didn't manage that is part of why trade trackers flagged the number as notable rather than just another routine soft opening in a crowded release calendar.
What happens next for the film?
A soft Day 1 isn't automatically a final verdict — plenty of films have recovered with a stronger second or third day once reviews and word of mouth kick in, particularly if critical reception turns out more favorable than the opening numbers suggest. But a start this modest, especially set against a genuinely dominant competing release still holding screens, gives Haiwaan a steep climb to reach a respectable total. The coming days will matter more than usual for this one in determining whether it can build any real momentum at all, and whether the film's box office fate ends up hinging more on its content than on its release-window timing.
For how competing releases have held or collapsed this year, see Mirzapur crossing Rs 200 crore worldwide and Toxic's 94% Monday crash.
