Castle Of The Undersea Devil has pulled in 4.1 crore net in two days on a limited run and is projected to close its opening weekend near 6.5 crore.
Doraemon: Castle Of The Undersea Devil is 13 lakh away from rewriting a small but real piece of Indian box office history. The latest entry in the long-running franchise has collected an estimated 4.1 crore net across its first two days, and that number puts it on the doorstep of the top five anime grossers of all time in the country.
The film to beat is Shin Chan: The Spicy Kasukabe Dancers, which sits at 4.22 crore. Doraemon needs just 12 lakh more to overtake it, which, going by the trend so far, should happen sometime on day three.
What makes the number more interesting is how few screens this film actually had to work with. Day one opened on only 717 shows and still pulled in 1.95 crore net, at a reported 75% occupancy, which is the kind of number distributors notice. The response was strong enough that 410 additional shows got added for day two, a Saturday, and that pushed the single-day tally to 2.15 crore.
Two days in, the film has done 4.1 crore net, which works out to roughly 4.83 crore gross. For a limited-release anime title without a Shah Rukh Khan or an Allu Arjun name attached, that is a solid trajectory.
Doraemon has always had a loyal following in India, built over years of Sunday morning television reruns rather than big theatrical pushes. What's different this time is the marketing. Trade watchers have called this the best-promoted Doraemon film to hit Indian screens, and the pre-release buzz appears to have translated into actual footfalls rather than just social media noise.
The weekend projection currently stands at 6.4 to 6.6 crore net, which would be a reasonable opening weekend for a film that never had a wide release to begin with. Whether that number holds depends largely on how the added shows perform on Sunday, and on word-of-mouth carrying into the first weekday.
Anime as a theatrical category in India has quietly built its own box office ecosystem over the last couple of years, with Shin Chan, Doraemon and other titles finding audiences that mainstream Hindi and regional releases don't always reach. Castle Of The Undersea Devil cracking a top five list, even a niche one, is a marker of how far that audience has grown.
For now, the number to watch is 4.22 crore. Cross that today, and Doraemon officially becomes one of the five biggest anime releases India has ever seen at the box office. The studio and distributors will be watching day three collections closely to see exactly when that line gets crossed.
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