Officially it’s week no. 5, and yet Aditya Dhar directed ‘Uri – The Surgical Strike’ shows no signs of stopping at all. With collections raining in despite the reduction of screens, the overall collection of this movie has breached Rs. 300 crores, which is a rarity, given the shelf lives of most of the current Bollywood movies.
According to famous trade analyst cum Bollywood news portal Bollywood Hungama, Uri has earned a total of Rs. 206.27 crores till date domestically, on a medium budget of Rs. 45 crores. Apart from that, the movie, which is based on the historical surgical strikes conducted in 2016 and released in the theatres on 11 January, has earned an impressive total of Rs. 100 crores approximately from overseas collections, which takes the total to an unbelievable Rs. 306.27 crores worldwide.
This is historic since ‘Uri’ neither has any major star nor has the typical ingredients for a smashing Bollywood blockbuster. Yet, this film has not only surprised the trade analysts but has also rode on the overwhelming response of the audience to breach this figure in barely 5 weeks, something not even the likes of Baahubali have been able to do through the Hindi version. Famous trade analyst cum film critic Taran Adarsh has been quite enthusiastic about the same as he posted the following tweet:-
#UriTheSurgicalStrike is on a record-smashing spree… Witnesses a phenomenal 115.96% growth on [fifth] Sat, which is more than double of #Baahubali2 [₹ 2.25 cr]… [Week 5] Fri 2.13 cr, Sat 4.60 cr. Total: ₹ 207.13 cr. India biz. #Uri #HowsTheJosh
— taran adarsh (@taran_adarsh) February 10, 2019
What’s even more better is that ‘Uri’, which has Vicky Kaushal in the lead role, has also managed to pip the likes of films like ‘Happy New Year’, ‘Ek Tha Tiger’, ‘Golmaal Again’, ‘Bajirao Mastani’, ‘3 Idiots’ etc. in terms of overall domestic collections, and is all set to surpass the lifetime domestic collections of even movies like ‘Prem Ratan Dhan Payo’. If ‘Uri – the Surgical Strike’ continues to rake in revenue and remain unaffected by upcoming movies like ‘Gully Boy’ and ‘Total Dhamaal’, a lifetime total of 400 crore+ worldwide can be possible as well.
This is quite big, since ‘Uri’, unlike the other mentioned movies, is driven more on content rather than star power. This also indicates a brighter future for movies like ‘Kesari’, ‘Batla House’, ‘Taanaji: The Unsung Warrior’ etc. , which intend to cover the unsung heroes of our vast Indian history, and won’t hesitate in breaking some ‘sacrosanct’ traditions of the elitist Bollywood.
Once again, a special mention goes to the vicious left liberals from portals like ‘The Wire’, ‘Scroll’, ‘Film Companion’ etc., who gave this movie the unexpected boost in collections with their free propaganda articles, and people flocked more to the theatres to watch this movie, as if to teach a hard lesson to these left liberals for treating patriotism as ‘criminal and toxic’.
To be honest, ‘Uri – the Surgical Strike’ owes its entire success to the Indian audiences, who have showered this movie with immense love and affection. The way that this movie has earned Rs. 300 crores worldwide in just 5 weeks is a clear indication that the Indian audience is changing for the better, and the future is quite bright for content-oriented cinema in India, especially Bollywood.
