Four days in, and Haiwaan is already looking like a write-off.

The Priyadarshan-directed crime thriller opened September 11 with Akshay Kumar and Saif Ali Khan sharing the screen for the first time since Tashan in 2008. It managed Rs 7.35 crore net in India across its opening weekend, per figures reported by DNA India. Then Monday happened.

Day four brought a 60% drop from Sunday's Rs 1.85 crore, with the film scraping together just Rs 70 lakh net. That takes the India net total to Rs 8.05 crore and the India gross to Rs 9.63 crore. Add another Rs 0.25 crore from overseas on the day, and the film's total overseas gross sits at Rs 3.00 crore, worldwide gross at Rs 12.63 crore.

For context, that's a film with two of Hindi cinema's most bankable names failing to clear even Rs 10 crore net in its first four days. Not the number anyone at the studio was hoping to see going into a second weekend.

The irony is hard to miss. Akshay and Saif's last team-up, Tashan, was also a box office dud, and this reunion after nearly two decades hasn't reversed that trend. Between Tashan in 2008 and Haiwaan now, the two have only crossed paths on screen in older films from the 1990s like Yeh Dillagi, Main Khiladi Tu Anari and Tu Chor Main Sipahi.

Haiwaan is the official Hindi remake of Oppam, the 2016 Malayalam thriller that starred Mohanlal as a visually impaired man squaring off against a serial killer played by Samuthirakani. That story has already had one other regional makeover, the 2019 Kannada film Kavacha with Shiva Rajkumar and Vasishta N. Simha. Whether the material simply doesn't travel a third time, or whether this particular version has other problems, is something trade watchers will be picking apart over the coming week.

The supporting cast isn't short on names either. Boman Irani, Shriya Pilgaonkar and Saiyami Kher round out the principal roles, Mohanlal turns up in a cameo, and the film carries the added weight of being Asrani's final screen appearance. None of that has translated into footfalls.

With the opening weekend already modest and a Monday crash of this scale, Haiwaan's path to even a Rs 10 crore net finish now looks uncertain. The real test comes over this coming weekend, when word of mouth, good or bad, usually decides whether a film like this claws back some ground or simply fades out of theatres altogether.