Rishab Shetty’s Kantara: A Legend Chapter 1 prequel to his 2022 blockbuster hit Kantara has set the box office on fire on the first day of its release. The film on its first day minted Rs 60 crore across languages with Kannada version bringing in Rs 18 crore and Hindi version adding Rs 19.50 crore. The Telugu and Tamil version brought Rs 12.5 crore and Rs 5.25 crore to the kitty respectively and the Malayalam version collected Rs 4.75 crore. And with that the film has taken the third biggest opening of 2025 followed by Rajinikanth’s Coolie and Pawan Kalyan’s They Call Him OG. Across languages it was the Hindi version that led from the front with Rs 19.50 crore collection as per Sacnilk and with that the film has taken the fourth biggest Hindi opening of the year nudging past Ajay Devgn, Ritiesh Deshmukh and Saurabh Shukla starrer Raid 2, directed by Rajkumar Gupta. The Raid sequel had collected Rs 19.25 crore on it’s first day. The top four Hindi day 1 grossers have been Vicky Kaushal’s Chhaava with Rs 31 crore, Hrithik Roshan’s War 2 with Rs 29 crore collection, Akshay Kumar’s Housefull 5 with Rs 21.5 crore collection and Mohit Suri, Ahaan Panday and Aneet Padda’s Saiyaara with Rs 21.5 crore collection. Kantara 2’s numbers can’t be seen in isolation as Varun Dhawan, Janhvi Kapoor, Sanya Malhotra, Rohit Saraf and Shashank Khaitaan’s Sunny Sanskari Ki Tulsi Kumari also released on the same day. And the film went on to make just Rs 9 crore- it got severely marred by Kantara 2’s release in Hindi market coupled with not so encouraging reviews. Last week both the films were in a lock jam as their distributors were demanding maximum screens for their films leaving the other film out in the cold. But both the films are still in early days and only time will decide the tale ahead.
