After scoring huge in the 60s on Friday as well as Saturday, Animal crossed the Rs. 70 crores barrier for the first time ever on Sunday. One actually expected this to happen on Saturday itself but since the Telugu and Tamil versions hadn’t grown on the same lines as the Hindi version, the milestone was missed by a small margin. Well, footfalls went berserk on Sunday and with several shows going houseful right from morning until the night, collections grew rapidly.

Again, the numbers could well have been even higher but with a running duration of around three and a half hours, late night shows were not as packed since that would have meant that patrons would have left theatres only during wee hours of the morning, and that too on a working day. That can well be expected to be the trend right through the week and hence it would work well for theatres if programming is in such a way that shows begin early in the morning on each of the days and the last show starts at maximum by 10 PM for adequate footfalls.

Coming to the Sunday numbers, they came to Rs. 70.69 crores and that has pushed the overall total Rs. 201.76 crores. That immediately places the film in the blockbuster category regardless of what really happens from this point on. In fact, the film has surpassed the entire weekend collections of Pathaan [Rs. 166.75 crores] by a huge distance and has narrowly missed out on going past Jawan which had collected Rs. 206.06 crores on its first three days.

All eyes are now on whether the Ranbir Kapoor starrer will end up averaging Rs. 25 crores per day during the weekdays as that would take it past the Rs. 300 crores mark in record time.

Note: All collections as per production and distribution sources