Thug Life box office collection day 1: Kamal Haasan and Mani Ratnam's film makes ₹17 cr despite no shows in Karnataka

Thug Life box office collection day 1: The Kamal Haasan-starrer is expected to hold on to the momentum in the coming days.

Thug Life box office collection day 1: The highly anticipated Thug Life, marking the reunion of Mani Ratnam and Kamal Haasan after the iconic Nayakan, hit theatres amidst controversy. Despite not being screened in Karnataka due to the Kannada language row involving Haasan, the film has still made a significant impact at the box office. (

Thug Life box office collection day 1: The film tells the tale of mafia kingpin Sakthivel (Kamal Haasan) and his brother Manickam.

Thug Life box office

According to Sacnilk.com, Thug Life raked in ₹17 crore on its opening day.

The latest update states Thug Life had 52.06% Tamil Occupancy on Thursday. The morning shows registered 50.66% occupancy, whereas there was 50.35% occupancy for the afternoon shows. The numbers dipped slightly for the evening shows at 45.15%. The night shows had 62.07% occupancy.

Thug Life is expected to hold on to the momentum in the upcoming days, and take full advantage of the extended weekend.

Since Thug Life has not been released in Karnataka, it lost out on an additional ₹35-40 crore, as predicted by a report in The Hindu. It all started when Kamal said during a promotional event, “Kannada was born out of Tamil,” which sparked massive uproar. The Karnataka Film Chamber of Commerce threatened to ban the film's release in the state, but the actor refused to apologise and claimed that his statement was being misconstrued.

About the film

Thug Life also features Trisha, Silambarasan, Joju George, Ashok Selvan, Nasser, Abhirami and others. The music for the film is by maestro AR Rahman while the cinematographer is Ravi K Chandran and editor is A Sreekar Prasad.

An excerpt from the Hindustan Times review of the film read, “What plagues the film is the the ‘old wine in old bottle’ screenplay which loses steam mid-way incorporating far too many unnecessary characters, meandering through various places with glaring loopholes and quite a few insipid dialogues. The movie has emotions, intense action and some romance but the plot is thin and execution was paramount to making this flick highly engaging. And that’s where it falters.”