The Telugu action thriller's 9.78 lakh tickets make it 2026's second-biggest Tollywood advance, though early reviews suggest a rockier weekend ahead.
Nani's The Paradise sold 9.78 lakh tickets in its day one advance booking window across India, according to Koimoi's final tally, pulling in a gross of Rs 20.41 crore before the film has even opened. That number beats out Ram Charan's Peddi, which sold 8.22 lakh tickets, making The Paradise the highest ticket count for a Telugu film's day one advance sales anywhere in the country in 2026.
The film opens across roughly 10,084 shows in India, the widest theatrical spread of Nani's career so far. Trade watchers point out that the calendar helped. The Paradise has the Friday largely to itself, with no rival big-ticket Telugu release competing for screens or star pull this week. But a release that wide also signals how much confidence exhibitors are putting behind Nani right now, and whether he's shifted from dependable performer to a genuine opening-day draw.
In gross terms, the film logs the fifth-best day one advance among all Indian language releases in 2026, and the second-best out of Tollywood specifically, trailing only Peddi. Net collections come in at Rs 17.3 crore.
Zoom out to the four-day extended opening weekend and the pre-sales figure climbs to Rs 40.52 crore gross, a solid number by any measure. Two things temper that. Blocked seats sit outside both tallies, so the real figure could shift once those get released for sale. And early reviews for the film are, by most accounts, not kind. That's the wrinkle nobody around this release is pretending doesn't exist. Big advances get a film through the door on day one. They don't decide what happens once word of mouth takes over the weekend.
What The Numbers Don't Answer Yet
Advance bookings measure appetite before anyone's actually seen the film. What they can't tell you is whether Friday's walk-in crowd, the ones who skipped pre-booking and will decide based on reviews and what friends say, shows up in similar strength. For a film sitting on close to Rs 41 crore in pre-sales alone, that gap between advance hype and actual reception is the thing worth tracking over the weekend.
The Paradise now has to manage two things together: hold its opening pace against whatever the reviews do to sentiment, and prove Nani's pull stretches beyond audiences who'd already decided before a single ticket went on sale. Both answers land by Sunday night, once the extended weekend total is locked in.
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