The two big Bollywood movies this week, Thank God and Ram Setu, have only been able to find middling success at the box office. While Ram Setu’s performance in India is still encouraging, it has not been as successful abroad as other Diwali films have been. It’s interesting to note that both of them have been beaten in the box offices in the US and UK by a Pakistani movie, The Legend of Maula Jatt, starring Fawad Khan.
The largest Pakistani film ever produced is The Legend of Maula Jatt. It was released two weeks ago, and since then, it has raked in more than PKR 100 crore ($37 crore), making it the highest-grossing Pakistani movie of all time. Mahira Khan, Hamza Ali Abbasi, and Humaima Malik are also featured in the movie.
According to a report by Dawn, The Legend of Maula Jatt made $46,825 on its thirteenth day (October 27) from 56 screens in the UK, well surpassing the earnings of the two Bollywood films. Both Thank God, starring Ajay Devgn and Sidharth Malhotra, and Ram Setu, starring Akshay Kumar, made $19,472 and $16,595 respectively from 83 and 95 screens on the same day. This is true even though both movies had only been out for three days at the time.
However, the disparity between Maula Jatt’s revenues and those of the Bollywood movies wasn’t as great in the US. On October 27, Thank God did business for $40,358 in the North American market (US-Canada), while Ram Setu earned $48,330 and Maula Jatt made $56,586. Notably, the Bollywood movies each had more theatres than the Pakistani movie.
The 1979 Pakistani movie Maula Jatt, which is regarded as a cult masterpiece, was rebooted as The Legend of Maula Jatt. Bilal Lashari is the film’s director; it is in the Punjabi language. It is Fawad’s first substantial part in a movie since the Bollywood hit Kapoor & Sons from 2015.
