Nani's reunion with Dasara director Srikanth Odela is inching along at the box office, with the reported ₹200 crore budget looming over every modest daily number.
Eight days in, and The Paradise still hasn't found the gear it needs. Nani's action drama collected an estimated ₹3.30 crore net in India on Day 8, a 2.9% dip from the ₹3.40 crore it made the day before, according to data tracked by Sacnilk.
That's not a crash. It's a slide, which in some ways is worse, because it means the film has settled into a pattern rather than finding a second wind.
The Telugu version is still doing the heavy lifting, bringing in ₹2.67 crore of the Day 8 total. Hindi added ₹60 lakh, and Tamil trailed with just ₹3 lakh. For a film positioned as a big pan-India swing, that split tells its own story.
Directed by Srikanth Odela, The Paradise marks his second film with Nani after 2023's Dasara, and the expectations were always going to be shaped by that memory. The cast around Nani this time includes Mohan Babu, Kayadu Lohar, Sonali Kulkarni and Raghav Juyal, which is a fairly loaded lineup for a film that hasn't translated star power into footfalls.
The budget is where the real pressure sits. Reports have pegged The Paradise's cost at over ₹200 crore, though there's been no official confirmation of that number from the makers. If it's anywhere close to accurate, a Day 8 haul of ₹3.30 crore is a long way from the kind of pace a film that size needs to be running at. Trade circles have been doing this math in private for days now, and it isn't flattering.
Reviews haven't helped build momentum either. The Free Press Journal's own review gave the film 1.5 stars, calling it "a visual treat for all Nani fans" while warning that "some might be disappointed with the film in totality due to the not-so-relevant and slightly unbelievable narrative." The reviewer went further, suggesting it's "a better option" to skip the film entirely for anyone who isn't up for "hardcore violence and spineless action."
That's a brutal line to be sitting next to a ₹200 crore price tag.
What The Paradise needs now is obvious even if it's hard to deliver this deep into a run: a weekend bump strong enough to change the conversation, and daily numbers that stop drifting downward. Day 8 to Day 9 comparisons will tell us whether word of mouth is stabilising things or whether the film has already found its ceiling.
Either way, the next few days of collections will decide whether The Paradise is remembered as a slow-burn recovery story or just another big swing that didn't connect.
Be the first to comment
Join the argument. No password, just your email or a passkey.