Trade circles are now throwing around a number for Nani's The Paradise: a ₹100 crore opening-day gross across all languages combined, if the film opens to positive word of mouth. That's according to 123telugu, which reported the figure this week as pre-release buzz around the Srikanth Odela-directed film hits a peak.

The Paradise is shaping up to be the biggest release of Nani's career by every commercial marker trade watchers track. Pre-release business, OTT rights, and the scale of the theatrical rollout are all reportedly bigger than anything he's attempted before. The film is expected to open on a record number of screens worldwide for a Nani release, per the report.

If that single-day figure holds and the run has legs, trade sources cited by 123telugu believe The Paradise could push past ₹200 crore lifetime, a number Nani has never touched.

The Odela connection

This is Nani's second film with Srikanth Odela, who directed him in Dasara, the 2023 release credited with moving Nani out of the boy-next-door slot he'd occupied for over a decade and into properly mass territory. Trade watchers see The Paradise as the film that could finish what Dasara started, taking Nani from dependable leading man to something closer to superstar status in Telugu cinema.

That word, superstar, is doing a lot of work in the current conversation around the film. Nani built his career on consistency rather than scale, playing relatable characters across genres and holding on to an audience that stuck with him film after film. The Paradise is a bet that the same actor can also carry a film pitched at the size and expectation of a mass opener.

Not everyone online is buying the framing before a single ticket has sold. Chatter around the film's press meets and promotional events has turned openly skeptical in places, with some comparing the confidence on display to other big Telugu releases that carried similar swagger into their opening weekend and then landed soft. There's also grumbling on social media about how visible Odela has been in the promotional cycle relative to the cast.

None of that changes what the trade is currently projecting. But it's worth remembering that pre-release numbers, however large, stay numbers until a Friday audience actually shows up. The ₹100 crore single-day figure and the ₹200 crore lifetime target are trade estimates, not studio guidance, and 123telugu's report doesn't name which trade voices are behind them.

What happens next is straightforward, if not simple. The Paradise has to release on however many screens it ends up booked into, and audiences across the Telugu markets and the diaspora circuit have to turn up on day one. Only then does anyone find out whether ₹100 crore was a floor or a stretch target.