Sardar 2 picked up just Rs 2.75 crore on its fourth day, taking Karthi and SJ Suryah's action sequel to a four-day gross of Rs 13 crore across India, per figures reported by Pinkvilla. For a film that carried real pre-release buzz, that's a thin number, and the daily drop from opening weekend suggests the slide isn't slowing.

The state-wise split tells its own story. Tamil Nadu, the film's home turf, has pulled in Rs 7 crore over four days, more than half the total. Telugu states added Rs 4.15 crore, Karnataka chipped in Rs 1.35 crore, and the rest of the country together managed only Rs 50 lakh. That's not a spread, that's a film that hasn't traveled.

Part of the problem is timing. Sardar 2 is fighting for screens against Soori and Suhas's Mandaadi, which Pinkvilla notes has shown a strong trend and grossed impressively over the same weekend. Two Tamil releases splitting the same audience rarely ends well for either, but right now Mandaadi looks like the one holding its ground.

The story picks up years after the first Sardar, with Karthi playing Vijay Prakash, a former operative pulled back into the field to take down his old adversary Black Dagger, played by SJ Suryah. The target this time is Doku, a biochemical weapon hidden across three keys held by separate operatives. Karthi's father in the film, Chandra Bose aka Sardar, has unfinished business with Doku himself, having failed to stop it from wrecking a village once before. So when Black Dagger makes his move, father and son end up on the same side of the fight again.

That's a decent hook on paper. The problem, as Pinkvilla flagged, has been the word of mouth from Day 1, which never really turned positive. Online chatter has only sharpened that impression, with several viewers drawing comparisons to how Indian 2 landed last year, a sequel that opened on nostalgia and then watched the reaction curve downward fast. Not everyone's writing it off though. There's a section of the audience still telling people it plays better on the big screen than the reviews suggest.

What happens next depends on the weekday hold. Tamil action sequels that don't clear their opening weekend cleanly tend to fade quietly into a streaming release rather than fight it out through a second week. With Mandaadi still pulling numbers and no fresh Tamil release lined up to change the equation immediately, Sardar 2's next few days will decide whether this becomes a slow-burn recovery or a straight write-off before the following Friday.