Five days in, and Excel Entertainment already has a bigger winner on its hands than one of its most beloved films ever made.

Mirzapur: The Movie, led by Pankaj Tripathi, Ali Fazal, Divyenndu and Ravi Kishan, has crossed a net collection of 133 to 134 crore in India as of Tuesday, September 8, according to early trends reported by Koimoi. Made on a reported budget of 90 crore, that puts the film's profit somewhere around 43 to 44 crore, which is already more than the entire lifetime earnings of Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara added together.

ZNMD is not a small comparison to reach for. Zoya Akhtar's 2011 multi-starrer, made on a budget of 60 crore, earned 89 crore over its full domestic run and closed with a net profit of 29 crore, a 48.33% return on investment that trade circles still cite as one of Excel's cleanest hits. Mirzapur: The Movie has apparently matched that ROI percentage and is closing in on beating it outright, sitting close to 48.89% profit by day five alone.

Tuesday's number itself, 17 to 18.25 crore net as per early trends, is only a marginal dip from Monday's 18.25 crore, which is the kind of weekday hold that box office trackers tend to flag as a sign of genuine word of mouth rather than opening-weekend inertia. Occupancy stood at a steady 41.7% across 10,685 shows nationwide, per Koimoi's tracking, which for a film five days out is not a number that usually holds unless audiences are actively choosing it over whatever else is running.

What's driving it, going by trade estimates cited in the same report, is the reach of the Mirzapur name itself into second-tier and mass centres that don't always turn up for a theatrical release with this much web-show baggage attached. There's also been no real competition in that window to eat into its shows, which has let the film hold its numbers through the working week instead of the usual weekday collapse.

Excel Entertainment has had franchise gambles before. This one, on current trends, looks set to be among its biggest, not just in scale but in how quickly it's recovered its cost and gone into pure profit territory. If the film holds anything close to its current pace through the coming weekend, the 150 crore mark isn't far off, and neither, by extension, is the question of what a sequel greenlight looks like for a franchise that just proved it can move an audience out of their homes and into a theatre.

The numbers above are early trends and subject to final reconciliation once official figures are out later this week.