A third-week bounce at the ticket window
Rajkummar Rao’s Prahaar – The Ujjwal Nikam Story collected Rs 23 lakh in India net earnings on its nineteenth day in cinemas, a 35.3% climb from the Rs 17 lakh it collected a day earlier. The Tuesday figure came from 924 shows, with an estimated 19,626 tickets sold, and took the film’s total ticket sales to 11,05,864.
The legal drama has now reached Rs 23.65 crore in India net earnings. Domestic gross stands at Rs 28.04 crore, and overseas receipts of Rs 3.03 crore bring the reported worldwide gross to Rs 31.07 crore.
A courtroom biography with a serious charge
Directed by Aakash Kaushik, the film follows the professional journey of special public prosecutor Ujjwal Nikam, with Rao in the central role. The story returns to two of India’s most closely watched legal chapters: the trials connected to the 1993 Bombay blasts and the prosecution of Ajmal Kasab after the 26/11 Mumbai attacks. Wamiqa Gabbi, Jaideep Ahlawat, Lalit Prabhakar, Sikandar Kher and Ashish Vidyarthi fill out the cast.
For a Hindi biopic of this kind, the audience is rarely driven by spectacle. It is an evening-led, word-of-mouth genre, and the occupancy pattern on Day 19 makes that plain.
The week-by-week curve
- Week 1: Rs 17.15 crore India net; Rs 20.44 crore gross.
- Week 2: Rs 4.50 crore India net; Rs 5.25 crore gross — a 73.8% drop from the opening week.
- Week 3, first five days: Rs 2 crore India net; Rs 2.35 crore gross.
The Hindi 2D version recorded 16.37% overall occupancy on Tuesday. Morning shows were at 3.69% and afternoon shows at 7.23%, but the film found its footing later: evening occupancy reached 15.69%, and night shows were the day’s highest at 18.23%.
What this signals for the run
A 35.3% Day 19 jump from a low base does not turn the film into a blockbuster, but it does show that the third week is not simply drifting. The recovery is concentrated in evening and night screenings, which suggests the film is holding a late-day urban audience rather than relying on holiday footfall.
Prahaar is part of Hindi cinema’s continuing appetite for legal figures whose careers intersect with public memory. Because Nikam’s cases are widely documented, the film carries built-in seriousness, but it also depends on viewers who already care about those trials. That may explain the sharp second-week drop and the modest third-week base from which Day 19 recovered.
The overall number also keeps the run in perspective: occupancy is still below 20%, and the next few days will determine whether that nightly demand is sustained or only a brief correction. As with all trade figures, the totals remain approximate until official studio data is updated.
Source: The Times of India
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