Haiwaan hit screens Friday, September 11, and early estimates put its opening day somewhere between ₹3.5 and ₹4 crore, according to Koimoi. That's enough to slot the Priyadarshan-directed thriller into the top five crime-thriller openings of the post-COVID stretch, ahead of Kareena Kapoor Khan's Buckingham Murders, per the same early trends.

The pull here is obvious. Akshay Kumar and Saif Ali Khan, sharing a frame again after all this time, in a film that's being sold as a dark, intense crime thriller rather than anything lighter. That reunion is doing real work at the box office even before word-of-mouth kicks in.

The release was wide, roughly 7,200 shows across the country, but the turnout wasn't even through the day. Morning and afternoon slots stayed thin, dragging the occupancy down to around 11%. Evening and night shows told a different story, with a noticeably healthier pickup, which is usually the pattern for a film this grim in tone. People aren't rushing in at noon for a crime thriller. They come after dark.

Delhi-NCR carried the biggest load on day one, with about 750 shows and occupancy touching 15.5%, the best number anywhere in the country per these estimates. Mumbai wasn't far off, running roughly 500 shows at 12.3% occupancy. Between them, the two metros did the heavy lifting, which tracks. A film this dark and metro-skewed was always going to find its first audience in the cities before anywhere else.

What happens now depends entirely on whether that late-show energy holds through the weekend. Early trends are exactly that, early, and Koimoi's own numbers are Day 1 estimates rather than confirmed collections. But the shape of it, low daytime footfall lifting sharply by evening, is the classic setup for a thriller that needs the weekend, not the opening day, to make its real case. If Saturday and Sunday build on that late surge instead of flattening out, Haiwaan could push past its opening number by a comfortable margin.

There's also the genre math to watch. Crime thrillers post-COVID haven't exactly been packing multiplexes on day one, so cracking the top five with an actor pairing this recognisable says something about star pull surviving in a tough category. Whether that translates into a real theatrical run, or just a curious opening weekend that tapers fast, is the only question that matters from here. Monday's numbers will tell that story properly. Until then, this is a decent start, not a verdict.