Thanks to hugely positive reviews and word-of-mouth Anubhav Sinha’s Mulk is going strong at the box-office. The drama starring Rishi Kapoor, Taapsee Pannu and Prateik Babbar among others is extremely relevant to the times we live in and shows a mirror to the systematic religious polarisation that’s currently underway. Little surprise then that Mulk hasn’t got many fans amongst the right-wingers who’ve been trying to run the film down at every given chance.
Sample A:
Besides trolling Mulk and its director Anubhav Sinha, the RW online gang also targeted the IMDB rating of the film bringing it down from 6.5 to 3.5 on the popular site.
Sample B:
Unfortunately, for the habitual creators of this kind of fake narratives, the box-office figures of Mulk tell a different tale. The small budget film grew from a day 1 collection of Rs 1.68 crore to Rs 3.67 crore on day 3.
As of now, including the collections on Monday (Rs 1.70 crore) and Tuesday (Rs 1.52 crore) - the total ticket sales of Mulk in India stand at Rs 11.38 crore.
According to sources in the trade, the budget of Mulk is around Rs 8.5 crore (the film was shot in just 28 days), add to this the P&A (print and advertising) costs of approximately Rs 4 to 5 crore. So the total cost of the film would be roughly Rs 13 crore, which means that Mulk will break even in a couple of days with domestic ticket sales ALONE. As the strong word-of-mouth on the film continues and with no Bollywood release this weekend, Mulk will rake in profits over the next couple of weeks. Add to this other sources of revenue - industry experts say that since Mulk is generating so much discussion, OTT platforms are offering it around Rs 11-12 crore for streaming rights. So the makers of Mulk are easily looking at making a good profit from the film.
Speaking to The Quint, Mulk’s director Anubhav Sinha says that he hates discussing figures but puts on record that the film is commercially a hugely successful venture already. “Even if you shut the business of the film today, we are in profits,” he says. “Believe me, I have been hearing the word-of-mouth, I have been speaking to the distributors, this film is going to run for another 3 to 4 weeks. Mulk is not earning Rs 8 crore a day, but you have to also see the size of the film.”
“Films like these are like the first half of Dhoni’s innings. He just takes singles and you don’t know when has made those many runs. The Monday has done better than the Friday, which is very rare.”Anubhav Sinha, Director ‘Mulk’
“The success of Mulk will prove that the majority of India is still very secular,” the filmmaker ends with a triumphant smile. The success of the film also lies in the very fact that the “other side” is expending so much time and energy to run down the film ever since its publicity rounds began. The growing popularity of Mulk seems to have hit that tribe exactly where it hurts.
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