Eighteen years is a long time to wait for a reunion that lands with this little noise. Akshay Kumar and Saif Ali Khan last shared a screen in 2008's Tashan, itself a dud. Haiwaan, their second attempt at box office magic together, has managed to do worse.

According to DNA India, the Priyadarshan-directed thriller opened to Rs 3 crore net on Friday, slid to Rs 2.50 crore on Saturday, and dropped further to Rs 1.85 crore on Sunday, closing its first weekend at Rs 7.35 crore net in India and Rs 11.55 crore gross worldwide. Pinkvilla's numbers tell a slightly different story, putting the Sunday collection at Rs 2 crore and the weekend total at Rs 6.75 crore. Either way, the direction is the same: down, and fast.

A slide with no floor

What's unusual here isn't just the low opening. Pinkvilla points out that even washouts like Akshay's own Selfiee, or Mission Raniganj, Auron Mein Kahan Dum Tha and Maidaan, found some uptick across the weekend once word spread. Haiwaan hasn't. Every single day has been lower than the one before it, a trend Pinkvilla calls more surprising than the weak Friday number itself.

Mixed-to-negative reviews haven't helped. Haiwaan casts Akshay as a serial killer and Saif as a visually impaired building maintenance head named Shyam Rane, whose heightened senses put him on a collision course with a mysterious figure hunting down people connected to his friend Pradhan. The plot is lifted wholesale from Priyadarshan's own Oppam, the 2016 Malayalam hit that starred Mohanlal as the blind man and Samuthirakani as his stalker. Oppam was remade again in Kannada in 2019 as Kavacha, with Shiva Rajkumar in the lead. Haiwaan is the third pass at the same story, and Mohanlal himself shows up here in a cameo, presumably as a nod to where it all began.

The supporting cast, Boman Irani, Shriya Pilgaonkar, Saiyami Kher, Rajpal Yadav, Sharib Hashmi and Rajesh Sharma among them, hasn't been enough of a draw either. The film also carries a quieter significance. It's the final screen appearance of veteran actor Asrani, who died in October 2025.

What's left to recover

None of the old chemistry from Yeh Dillagi, Main Khiladi Tu Anari or the Tashan era seems to have carried over commercially, whatever nostalgia the trailers tried to sell. Overseas, Haiwaan has added just Rs 2.75 crore in three days, which won't do much to offset a domestic run that's already flatlining.

With weekday collections typically running lower than the weekend even for films that open well, the real question is whether Haiwaan can even cross Rs 10 crore net in India by the end of its first week. On current trend, that's not a given.