“Dhurandhar 2” just did something that took years for anyone in Hindi cinema to even get close to. In 11 days.
Jio Studios and B62 Studios’ spy-action sequel “Dhurandhar: The Revenge” crossed $147.8 million globally, blowing past the lifetime number of its own first film ($141.5 million). That’s not a sequel win. That’s a statement.
North America is where this gets really interesting. “Baahubali 2” had held the all-time Indian film record in North America at $20.2 million since 2017. S.S. Rajamouli built that number on the back of a Telugu-language cultural phenomenon — a film that basically had no competition in that space for years. Nobody touched it. Not even close.
Then “Dhurandhar: The Revenge” walked in and crossed $23 million.
That’s a Hindi-language film dethroning a Telugu blockbuster in a market where Telugu films have historically dominated the Indian diaspora box office. That’s not a small thing. The first “Dhurandhar” had already found a real audience in North America — came close to the top, didn’t quite get there. The sequel finished the job.
Shah Rukh Khan’s “Pathaan” — one of the biggest Bollywood releases in recent memory — opened to $6.9 million in its first three days in North America back in 2023. “Dhurandhar: The Revenge” opened to $10 million in its opening weekend from 987 venues alone. Five-day launch total? $14 million. That’s not comparable. That’s a different conversation entirely.
Look, I’ll be real — Bollywood has spent years getting lapped by South Indian cinema in the global market. “RRR,” “KGF,” “Baahubali” — Telugu and Kannada films rewrote what “Indian cinema” meant overseas. Hindi films felt like they were playing catch-up.
That story’s getting rewritten. At least for now.
“Dhurandhar: The Revenge” released across approximately 2,200 cinemas and 3,000 screens without even including Gulf territories — the widest overseas release ever for a Hindi film. And it pushed into markets that don’t usually touch Indian releases at all: Finland, Uruguay, Ukraine, Bulgaria, Romania, Chile, Mexico, Cyprus. That’s not just chasing the Indian diaspora. They went after new markets nobody was touching — and it paid off.
More than 80% of screens held the film into Week 2 across international markets. That’s legs. That’s word of mouth doing real work.
The China number looms large here. “Dhurandhar” hasn’t released there yet. Aamir Khan’s “Dangal” still sits at $192 million all-time for Indian films in China. That ceiling exists. Whether “Dhurandhar: The Revenge” ever gets a China release — and what it could do there — is the question nobody’s answered yet.
The U.K. is the one soft spot right now. The film sits at £3.4 million ($4.4 million), still trailing “Pathaan’s” £4.3 million ($5.6 million) for second place in that territory. One market. But not a small one.
Aditya Dhar directed the original “Uri: The Surgical Strike” and people called that a fluke. Then he built an entire spy universe and his sequel just knocked off a Rajamouli record in North America. At some point you stop calling it luck and start calling it a franchise. Ranveer Singh playing dual roles, R. Madhavan, Sanjay Dutt, Arjun Rampal — this film was assembled like someone was serious about building something bigger than one movie.
The India gross alone is $110.7 million in under two weeks. This isn’t a Bollywood comeback story. This is a whole different machine being built.
The real question is — if “Dhurandhar 2” ever lands in China, does it actually challenge “Dangal’s” $192 million?
