After successes like Love Today and Dragon, Pradeep Ranganathan is all set to back on the big screen with his latest love story Dude co-starring Mamitha Baiju, releasing on 17th October. On Wednesday morning the advance booking for the film had taken a slow start where it had collected around Rs 38.55 lakhs but by Thursday morning the number has jumped up to Rs 2.48 crore- more than 500 % jump in just 24 hours.
But one also needs to take a closer look at the details, of the total 2.48 crore advance collection about Rs 1.45 crore collection has come from advance booking and the rest has been organic sale. On Wednesday morning the film had an overall advance booking of Rs 38.55 lakh- out of which Rs 26.46 lakh has come from block booking. So both- organic and block booking have shown significant jumps. Dragon had taken an opening collection of Rs 6.5 crore and Love Today was at Rs 4.33 crore and with current collection of Rs 2.48 crore , one can safely assume that the day 1 collection of Dude would be between Rs 5 to Rs 6 crore.
The film;s performance in the North American market has also shown good collection where as per latest numbers the film has earned about USD 100K in the circuit with about USD 88K coming from US market and rest from Canada. The breakeven point for the film has been pegged at USD 2.3 million which going by current collection is looking like a tall order
Tamil Cinema has been going through a churn at this point where none of the existing stars have been able to take up the positions of Rajinikanth, Kamal Haasan and Thalapathy Vijay. Pradeep came in as a spring of fresh hope but he will need to prove his worth at the box office with huge collections.
At one point Pradeep’s other film Love Insurance Kompany with Krithi Shetty, SJ Suryah, directed by Vignesh Shivan was also eyeing the Diwali release but it ultimately made way for Dude.
