Rajinikanth's 'Darbar' off to a good start

Rajinikanth's much-hyped Darbar, which hit screens on Thursday (January 9, 2020), has opened on a solid note at the Tamil Nadu box office, much to the delight of 'Superstar' fans.

According to trade analyst Ramesh Bala, the flick's opening day collections are likely to be around Rs 15 crore.

If this is indeed the case, Darbar will outperform Rajinikanth's previous Pongal release Petta, which had collected around Rs 13 crore on the opening day. The Karthik Subbaraj-directed movie, however, was not a solo outing as it had hit screens alongside Ajith Kumar's Viswasam.

Darbar is also likely to set the Chennai box office on fire. As reported earlier, the opening day collections will most probably be between Rs 1.5 and Rs 2 crore, which means it will fail to match 2.0 despite being a Pongal release. It should, however, beat festival biggies such Seema Raja (Rs 97.5 lakh) and Kaithi (Rs 40 lakh) with ease.

Either way, the general feeling is that the figures would have been higher had the makers decided to release the Pongal biggie on a Friday as opposed to a Thursday. The film might also have benefited had it been set in Tamil Nadu as opposed to Mumbai.

Meanwhile, the flick has received favourable reviews from all quarters and the Word of Mouth is quite healthy. As such, the biggie will most probably witness good growth over the weekend.

Darbar, an old school actioner, has been directed by top filmmaker AR Murugadoss and features Rajinikanth in the role of a 'bad cop'. The cast also includes Nayanthara, Nivetha Thomas, Yogi Babu and Sunil Shetty.