After two back to back successes in Love Today and Dragon, Pradeep Ranganathan was expected to deliver his hattrick of hits with his latest release Dude. The film released on 17th October in time to benefit from the weekend and also cash on the Diwali holidays.
The film began its journey on a strong note where on Friday it collected Rs 9.75 crore and followed it up with Rs 10.4 crore on day 2, Rs 10.6 crore on day 3 and Rs 10.8 crore on day 4. On Tuesday it witnessed a small dip to earn Rs 8.75 crore but Wednesday onwards the fall became steep. On Wednesday it earned just Rs 4 crore,, Thursday it collected only Rs 2.2 crore and on its Friday the collection reached just Rs 2 crore. On its second Saturday it saw a good spike as it collected Rs 3.4 crore and Sunday stayed steady at Rs 3.5 crore, with Monday once again witnessing a fall to collect just Rs 1.40 crore, taking the overall collection of the film to Rs 66.80 crore.
And in all this roller-coaster ride Dude has managed to beat the lifetime collection of his debut film Love Today which had minted Rs 66.57 crore. Dude has now become the second biggest hit of his career. The top spot is retained by Dragon which had a lifetime collection of over Rs 100 crore. At this point Dude doesn’t seem to be in the space to take on Dragon.
While Dude was appreciated by fans and critics but it failed to connect with the larger audience which could have led to a bigger box office collection. But Pradeep will have one more chance at the box office this year with Love Insurance Kompany releasing by the end of the year, it features Krithi Shetty and SJ Suryah along with him and has music by Anirudh and is directed by Vignesh Shivan.
