Dulquer Salmaan's new film has grossed roughly Rs 39 crore worldwide over its opening weekend but has actually slipped rather than grown from Friday onward, tracking data shows.
Dulquer Salmaan's I'm Game isn't behaving like a typical weekend release. Trade tracker Track Tollywood reports the film's worldwide gross stands at approximately Rs 39 crore after its opening weekend, a number that sounds decent until you look at the trend line underneath it.
Most films get a bump on Saturday and Sunday. This one didn't. Track Tollywood says collections showed "no substantial improvement" on Day 2 and instead of the usual weekend surge, numbers actually declined across the opening days. That's the kind of pattern that spooks distributors more than a soft Friday ever could.
The India numbers, per the outlet, sit at Rs 19.70 crore tracked gross across four days, with actual collections estimated closer to Rs 22 crore. Overseas has added another Rs 17 crore or so, which is what gets the worldwide figure up to that Rs 39 crore mark. Split that way, the overseas share is doing a fair bit of the heavy lifting.
Here's the part that should worry Team I'm Game the most. Kerala is Dulquer Salmaan's home turf, the market where his films are expected to open big and hold. At the current pace, the outlet estimates the film might not even cross Rs 25 crore there. For a Dulquer starrer, that would count as a genuinely weak run, not just a soft one.
Word of mouth appears to be the culprit. Track Tollywood notes the film "did not receive unanimous positive talk" from audiences, and that's shown up directly in the collections rather than staying confined to social media chatter. Online, opinion is split on whether I'm Game is a hit or a miss, and the box office graph so far reads like the audience hasn't made up its mind either.
The next few days matter more than the opening weekend did. Weekday collections for a film like this usually drop hard once the festive or holiday cushion, if there was one, wears off. If I'm Game can't stabilise through Monday to Thursday, a below-average theatrical run starts looking less like a possibility and more like the only outcome left on the table.
Whether Dulquer Salmaan's next few films get a course correction in marketing, or whether the industry reads this as an audience problem rather than a release-strategy one, will depend on how these weekday numbers land. For now, the film's fate rests on a Kerala box office that isn't cooperating.
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