The Tamil comedy-drama has pulled in close to seven crore in three days even as Keerthy Suresh's Dorothy edges toward a formal success verdict in its second weekend.
Vijay Sethupathi's Baththa has found its legs at the box office. The Tamil comedy-drama, directed by Balaji Tharaneetharan and co-starring Lijo Mol Jose, opened to a modest ₹1.5 crore net on Thursday, then climbed to ₹2.7 crore on day two before pulling in ₹2.75 crore on Saturday, according to figures reported by Koimoi. That's an 83% jump over its opening number, taking the three-day India net to ₹6.95 crore against a ₹8.2 crore gross.
The film was made on a reported budget of ₹28 crore, so three days in, it's recovered about 24% of that. Not a number anyone's celebrating yet, but the trajectory is what matters here, and Koimoi notes Sunday should push it further. At this rate Baththa is set to overtake the lifetime haul of Sethupathi's earlier release Ace, which closed at ₹8.95 crore net. That milestone could fall within days.
The film is set in 1986 Madras and carries a plot that sounds almost deliberately out of step with current trends: an eight-year-old boy accidentally traps a feared local criminal inside a school restroom, and an unlikely bond grows out of the standoff. It's currently sitting at 8.4 on IMDb. Word of mouth, by the numbers at least, is doing the heavy lifting on growth rather than any opening-weekend hype.
Meanwhile, further down the Kollywood release calendar, Karthik Subbaraj's Dorothy is having a quieter but steadier run of its own. The Keerthy Suresh-led period drama, also starring Sananth and Rishikanth, has now logged nine days in theatres and sits at ₹9.15 crore net against a ₹10 crore budget, per Koimoi's tracking. That puts it just ₹85 lakh short of what the trade typically calls a success verdict, recovering roughly 91.5% of its cost already.
Dorothy's day-wise numbers tell a story of remarkable consistency rather than a single big spike. It opened at ₹90 lakh, touched a first-weekend high of ₹1.4 crore on day three, dipped into the mid-80-lakh range through the week, and bounced back to ₹1 crore on its second Saturday. Minimal weekday erosion for a film nine days old is not nothing. Koimoi points out Dorothy has already overtaken Revolver Rita, which closed at ₹3.99 crore, to become one of Keerthy Suresh's better post-pandemic theatrical performers.
If Dorothy does cross that success line, it'll reportedly be the tenth Tamil film this year to manage it, a reminder that 2026 has been a genuinely solid year for Kollywood at the ticket window even without a runaway blockbuster forcing the conversation. Whether Baththa can keep compounding through its first full week, and whether Dorothy clears its own finish line this weekend, should both become clear by Monday.
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