Two very different box office stories are playing out for the same film. Mirzapur: The Movie, which opened September 4 in Hindi and Telugu, has raced past its own reported budget within four days in India. And in the Telugu states, where the original show has a rabid Amazon Prime Video following, theatres are nearly empty.

The Free Press Journal put the Hindi net collection at Rs 109.75 crore after day four, with a Monday dip that's typical for a film riding weekend word of mouth. Early estimates for Tuesday put it around Rs 15-16 crore, with evening and night shows likely to decide whether that number holds or climbs. The worldwide gross, per the same report, stood at Rs 154.05 crore after four days, with Rs 22.50 crore of that coming from overseas.

Telugu Filmibeat's trade tracking tells a slightly different version of the bigger picture, pegging the Hindi version's tally at Rs 135 crore domestically and the worldwide gross at around Rs 150 crore after including $2.5 million overseas. The two outlets don't line up exactly on the totals, which happens with early trade estimates before official numbers land, but both agree on one thing: this is a big hit in the Hindi markets.

The Telugu collapse

None of that momentum survived the dub. Telugu Filmibeat reports the film opened across roughly 80 locations and 90 screens with 300 shows in Andhra and the Nizam circuit, a release width that assumed the show's OTT fandom would show up in cinemas. It didn't. Day one brought in Rs 25 lakh, day two another Rs 25 lakh, day three Rs 25 lakh again, before a slide to Rs 15 lakh on day four and a marginal recovery to Rs 20 lakh on day five. Five days, Rs 1.1 crore total.

Trade sources cited by the outlet called the occupancy numbers shocking given how big Mirzapur is on streaming in the Telugu states, and said exhibitors cut screen counts sharply once the early shows played to empty halls. That's the usual death spiral for a film that isn't drawing walk-ins, fewer screens means fewer shows means fewer chances to turn it around.

The cast, Pankaj Tripathi, Ali Fazal, Divyenndu, Abhishek Banerjee, Ravi Kishan, Jitendra Kumar, Rasika Dugal, Shreya Pilgaonkar and Shweta Tripathi, is the same across both versions. So is Gurmmeet Singh's direction and the Farhan Akhtar-Ritesh Sidhwani production under Excel Entertainment. What's different is whether an audience raised on the show binges the film on a big screen, and in the south, right now, they're not.

Mirzapur's reported budget sits at Rs 90-100 crore, unconfirmed officially by the makers. On the Hindi numbers alone it's already comfortably in profit. The Free Press Journal's review gave it three stars, calling it familiar but serviceable, a film that doesn't reinvent the franchise but lets fans hang out with characters they already love. Whether that affection travels into a second week, and whether the Telugu run finds any footing at all, is what the next few days of trade tracking will tell.