Vishwanath And Sons has finished its theatrical run at Rs 212.23 crore gross worldwide, and that number does two contradictory things at once. It makes the film Suriya's second highest-grossing release of all time. And it still books as a loss.

The Tamil family drama, also starring Mamitha Baiju, opened on August 14 to warm reviews. Critics and audiences liked the performances and the writing, even if a few called the story predictable. That reception carried the film through a strong first fortnight before collections cooled off through weeks three, four and five.

Here's the arithmetic, as per Koimoi's tracking. The opening day in India brought in Rs 15.35 crore. By the time the run wrapped, that number had multiplied roughly eightfold, landing the domestic tally at Rs 122.44 crore net, or Rs 144.48 crore gross. Add Rs 67.75 crore from overseas and the worldwide gross settles at Rs 212.23 crore.

That's enough to push Vishwanath And Sons past Singam 2, which sits at Rs 122.8 crore, by more than 72 percent, and take the number two spot on Suriya's all-time list, behind only his biggest hit to date.

So where's the loss? The film was reportedly made on a budget of Rs 130 crore. Its India net of Rs 122.44 crore means it recovered about 94 percent of that spend, leaving a shortfall of roughly Rs 7.56 crore, or 5.82 percent. By Koimoi's own parameters, that's a losing verdict at the Indian box office, worldwide numbers notwithstanding.

The territory breakdown makes the picture stranger still. Distributors reportedly turned a profit everywhere the film released, except in Tamil Nadu, its home ground, where it flopped outright. A Suriya film doing brisk business in Kerala and the overseas circuit while stumbling in its own state is not the usual script.

Online, the reaction has split roughly along those same lines. Some viewers are calling it a family-audience win that held its own against bigger releases, with one post going as far as putting its footfalls in classic territory. Others are asking, bluntly, why it underperformed given the reviews. There's also a section of viewers already pitching a sequel, with talk of the story taking a Gone Girl-style turn, and enough chatter around its themes for someone to label it, only half admiringly, "progressive regressive."

The film is now streaming, which should settle at least one open question: whether word of mouth on a platform does more for it than the last three weeks in theatres did. Suriya's next has yet to be dated.