In its opening week Dhurandhar has earned Rs.1,350 crore worldwide. A sequel (The Revenge) that earned more on paid previews alone than most Bollywood films earn in their opening weekend. Dhurandhar’s both parts running simultaneously in theatres and on Netflix — driving each other’s numbers up. Ram Gopal Varma comparing it to a “Sholay x 100.” Steven Spielberg and Christopher Nolan being told they should watch it on Day 1.
This is not normal. Bollywood does not behave like this.
So what happened? How did a nearly four-hour spy thriller — released without a Khan, without a major holiday weekend, without a single major pan-India star in the lead — become the highest-grossing Hindi film of 2025 and the second-highest of all time?
Let’s actually figure this out, because “it’s patriotic and India likes that” is a lazy answer. Plenty of patriotic films have bombed. Dhurandhar didn’t just succeed — it sustained, and the reasons for that are genuinely interesting.
The Ranveer Singh Problem — and How Dhurandhar Solved It
Here’s the uncomfortable truth that trade insiders were privately saying before release: Ranveer Singh was not an obvious fit for a restrained spy thriller.
This is the guy who wears outfits that make photographers lower their cameras in confusion. Subtle is not his default register. When the casting was announced, a fair number of people assumed he’d bring his usual 110% energy to a genre that rewards stillness.
And then the film released, and audiences walked out stunned.
As one IMDB reviewer wrote, Singh “strips away his usual high-energy flamboyance to deliver a performance of simmering intensity.” Viewers on social media kept using the same words repeatedly: “controlled,” “restrained,” “quiet.” One X user posted: “Ranveer Singh is a MOVIE EXPERIENCE. You FEEL the intensity in every frame.”
What made it work wasn’t the action — it was what Singh does between the action. Playing Hamza Ali Mazari, an undercover RAW agent who infiltrates Karachi’s criminal underworld, he’s playing a man who can never fully be himself. That psychological weight — the performance of a performance — is something Indian cinema rarely asks its stars to carry. Singh carried it.
Equally important: Akshaye Khanna as the antagonist Rehman Dakait. His dialogue — “India’s biggest enemies are Indians themselves” — became the most-shared line from the film, not because it’s triumphant, but because it’s uncomfortable. Khanna delivers it without any drama, which is exactly why it hits. One IMDB reviewer noted: “He barely speaks, yet his eyes carry entire paragraphs. Every expression lands like a threat, and he steals the frame without even trying.”
When people say a film has “great performances,” they often mean one performance. Dhurandhar had two.
The Story Felt Real — Because It Was Built on Real Things
Dhurandhar is officially fiction. The opening disclaimer says so.
But then the film spends three and a half hours drawing from events that Indian audiences actually lived through: the IC-814 hijacking of 1999, the 2001 Parliament attack, the 2008 Mumbai attacks. The backdrop is Operation Lyari — Pakistan’s own crackdown on Karachi’s criminal syndicates — used here as the setting for a decade-long Indian intelligence operation.
That specificity is doing something psychologically important. When a film references things you watched on the news, you stop treating it like entertainment and start treating it like history. The line between “this is a story” and “this actually happened” blurs — and the film knows exactly what it’s doing with that blur.
This is why Dhurandhar hit differently than, say, War 2 or Singham Returns, both of which had bigger star power and similar budgets. Those films gave spectacle. Dhurandhar gave spectacle plus the feeling of watching something that mattered. The distinction sounds small. At the box office, it was enormous.
The Franchise Move That Changed Everything
Here’s the strategic move that most analysts have underplayed.
Dhurandhar was always meant to be one film. During production — shot continuously between July 2024 and October 2025 — it became clear the footage was simply too large and too narratively complex to compress. The decision to split into two parts was made in post-production, with both parts already finished before Part 1 even released.
Part 1 dropped on December 5, 2025. Part 2 (Dhurandhar: The Revenge) was locked for March 19, 2026 — timed to Gudi Padwa, Ugadi, and Eid. That’s three and a half months between parts.
Think about what that does psychologically. Part 1 ends not with resolution but with a pause — Hamza mid-operation, the mission unfinished. Audiences walked out emotionally invested with nowhere to put that energy for exactly 15 weeks. When The Revenge opened, it sold over 10 lakh tickets in advance bookings alone, generating over ?50 crore before a single show ran.
But the real magic happened digitally. While The Revenge was breaking theatre records, Part 1 — now on Netflix — surged 130% in viewership. People who hadn’t watched were catching up before seeing the sequel. People who had watched were rewatching before the sequel. The two parts were essentially marketing each other around the clock.
That’s not a franchise strategy. That’s a binge platform strategy imported into theatres. Netflix figured this out years ago. Dhurandhar figured out how to do it with a cinema release.
The Week 2 Phenomenon (This Almost Never Happens)
Most Hindi films follow a predictable pattern: big opening, Monday cliff, slow fade. The trade calls it “front-loaded.” Films survive on their first weekend and then live or die quietly.
Dhurandhar did the opposite.
Week 1: ?207 crore. Week 2: ?253 crore.
Week 2 was bigger than Week 1. To understand how unusual this is, consider that this almost never happens outside of a Baahubali-scale event. Films don’t grow in Week 2 unless something unusual is driving people back — and that something is pure, organic word of mouth. Not Instagram ads. Not influencer screenings. Actual people telling actual people: you need to see this.
The runtime — 3 hours and 34 minutes — which analysts flagged as a commercial risk, actually contributed to this. Long films reward repeat viewing. You miss things. First-time watchers noticed details that second-time watchers had spotted, and vice versa. There’s a genuine Reddit thread dedicated entirely to background details and continuity clues in Dhurandhar. That kind of audience engagement is worth more than any marketing budget.
One viewer put it plainly after seeing The Revenge: “Don’t ask about the story, you have to watch it. The background score, characterisation, story, twists — this movie will earn 2,000 crore.”
He might be right.
The Part Nobody Wants to Discuss (But Should)
Dhurandhar is not a universally loved film. Let’s be clear about that.
Critics were sharply divided — not on the craft, but on what the craft is in service of. The Hindu called it “overstretched and chest-thumping.” Mint called it “propaganda in service of a hawkish India, designed to flatter the ruling BJP leadership.” The Independent noted the sequel appears to be cementing “hypermasculine nationalism as one of Bollywood’s most reliable box-office formulas.”
The film was banned across Gulf Cooperation Council countries. An FIR was filed against Ranveer Singh during promotions. A key sequence in The Revenge uses archival footage of PM Modi announcing demonetisation, which sparked immediate debate online.
The film’s own disclaimer says it’s fiction. Then it proceeds to treat documented historical atrocities as the backdrop for its protagonist’s heroism, with the line between what actually happened and what Hamza did to prevent it deliberately unclear.
Does any of this change the achievement? Not really. But it adds something important to the conversation. Dhurandhar works as powerfully as it does precisely because it blurs these lines. That’s not an accident — it’s a design choice. Understanding that design choice is essential to understanding why 1.3 billion people in one country responded to this film the way they did.
A film that makes 253 crore in Week 2 is doing something right. What exactly it’s doing — and for whom — is a conversation worth having.
What Aditya Dhar Understood That Everyone Else Missed
After Uri: The Surgical Strike became the biggest Bollywood hit of 2019, Aditya Dhar could have made the comfortable follow-up. He took six years.
The interesting thing is that Dhurandhar is, in many ways, the opposite of Uri. Uri was clean — a clear mission, a clear enemy, a triumphant ending. Dhurandhar is murkier. The hero isn’t heroic in the traditional sense; he’s a young man from Punjab who was in prison before intelligence chief Ajay Sanyal recruited him and shaped him into a weapon. The mission costs things. The victories feel complicated.
That moral greyness is unusual for Indian mass cinema, which tends to prefer its heroes uncomplicated. It’s also probably a significant reason why the film holds up on rewatch when cleaner, louder action films don’t. You’re not just watching action. You’re watching a man trying to hold himself together while becoming something he didn’t ask to become.
Dhar understood something that blockbuster directors often forget: audiences will forgive a slow stretch if the emotional stakes are real. They will not forgive a fast film they don’t care about.
So Where Does This Leave Us?
The Dhurandhar franchise has crossed ?2,200 crore worldwide combined. The Revenge is still in theatres. Part 1 is on Netflix. Both are pulling audiences simultaneously.
Whether you find the film thrilling, troubling, or both — it has undeniably reset the rules for what a Hindi film can do commercially. It’s normalized the idea of theatrical binge franchises. It’s proven that Ranveer Singh, given the right director, can carry something with genuine weight. It’s shown that a spy thriller can compete globally on Hindi-language terms, without needing a pan-India strategy.
And perhaps most importantly: it’s shown that Indian audiences will reward a film that respects their intelligence enough to give them complexity — even when, or especially when, that complexity is wrapped inside four hours of incredible action.
That’s not a formula. That’s filmmaking.
Dhurandhar (Part 1) is currently streaming on Netflix India. Dhurandhar: The Revenge is in theatres now.
The Numbers, Right Now (Updated March 27, 2026)
Here’s where Dhurandhar: The Revenge stands as of Day 8:
- India Net: ?674 crore
- India Gross: ?805 crore
- Worldwide Gross: ?1,067 crore — crossed ?1,000 crore in just 7 days
- Day 8 alone: ?49.70 crore from 19,493 shows
- North America opening: $14 million over 5 days — record for any Bollywood film, just behind Baahubali 2’s all-India language record
For context: in 8 days, The Revenge has already surpassed the lifetime domestic earnings of Jawan (?640 crore), Stree 2 (?598 crore), and Chhaava (?601 crore).
The Dhurandhar franchise is now officially the first Indian franchise where both individual entries have crossed ?1,000 crore worldwide. Not Baahubali. Not YRF’s spy universe. Dhurandhar.
