The Pathaan juggernaut conitunes on Friday as the film sustains superbly post the big holiday as collections could come out in the 35 crore nett range and with clear momentum in mass circuits it would be no suprise if the number comes out higher by the evening. If the the film had gone to 28-30 crore nett that itself would have been a fantastic hold and here it is far better setting itself up for huge numbers on Saturday and Sunday. 

There is now clear momentum across all Hindi belts which had issues on day one with protests but that has all been killed. There were many cinemas that had to shut on the first day while it was ahandfull on day two and now on day three there no such reports of shut cinemas. This is the power of the box office though we have seen a tendency to blame negativity on the failure of the content with Laal Singh Chaddha being teh big fall film falling into this category and there will be others.

The weekend is historic becoming the first film in history to cross 150 crore nett as it will land over 155 crore nett and this is a Wed - Fri weeeknd albeit with a big national holiday in the middle. The collections are now extraordinary all over after some underperformance on the first day at places but East India is the best with records falling by margins. War had also done phenomenally well here but that was because it was Durga Puja week while here it is normal.

It will be called the comeback of Shahrukh Khan and as its a release after fours year it can be called a comeback from that angle but not as a star because the clout was there in 2003, 2013 and now 2023, all Pathaan does is confirm the clout and if not Pathaan something else would have done it.Years of megastardom does not die with 3 or 4 films not performing.

The film in real terms held far more importance for the studio Yash Raj Films with a huge film on the floors and many in the pipeline and a below performance here would have put all the pipeline films in danger of being scrapped or delayed but with the BLOCKBUSTER succes of Pathaan the prevailing fear would have turned into huge confidence.