Sidharth Malhotra and Tamannaah Bhatia's folklore thriller pulled in a modest Day 1 net against production costs pegged as high as Rs 150 crore.
Rs 8 crore. That's what The Vvaan: Force of the Forrest made on its opening day, according to trade tracker Sacnilk, from 6,746 shows across the country. Add taxes and the gross climbs to roughly Rs 9.60 crore. Neither number looks great once you set it against what the film reportedly cost to make.
Estimates on the budget vary, which is its own small story. Reports peg the core production spend at Rs 80-100 crore. Factor in promotions and the wider marketing push, and some estimates push the total closer to Rs 150 crore. Against either figure, an Rs 8 crore net opening reads as underwhelming rather than disappointing outright. It's the kind of number a film can still recover from over a long weekend, but not one that suggests audiences showed up in the numbers a Sidharth Malhotra-Tamannaah Bhatia pairing might have promised.
The film released Friday, September 25, and it's an unusual swing for both leads. Directed by Deepak Kumar Mishra, who built his name on Permanent Roommates and Panchayat, this marks his first Hindi feature. The story pulls from Indian folklore, mixing fantasy and supernatural drama, and puts Malhotra and Bhatia at the centre of a plot built around village myth and something lurking in the forest.
Reaction online has been split. Some viewers are into the atmosphere and the folk-horror texture. Others aren't convinced the film earns its two-and-a-half hours. That divide shows up in the reviews too. The Free Press Journal's critic gave it 2.5 stars out of 5, calling the premise genuinely strong and the visuals impressive, while pointing to Mishra's direction as the weak link. "The Vvaan had the potential to be a fantastic film," the review noted, adding that it becomes "strictly a one-time watch" because of that gap between concept and execution, though it flagged the film as worth a look for Malhotra's fan base specifically.
So where does that leave the film? Day 1 numbers rarely tell the whole story for a genre title like this, especially one leaning on word of mouth rather than a franchise name to pull crowds. Weekend holds will matter more here than usual. If Saturday and Sunday show growth, the studio has a case that this is a slow-burn opener rather than a weak one. If the numbers flatten or dip, recovering even the lower end of that Rs 80 crore budget gets difficult fast.
The real test comes with the extended weekend tally and whatever word of mouth does to Monday's numbers, particularly with Tamannaah and Malhotra's combined pull yet to be fully tested against a crowded late-September release calendar.
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