Bollywood Blockbuster ‘Animal’ Global Box Office Poised to Hit Another Milestone

The controversy around Animal, the new Bollywood blockbuster that is delivering mammoth numbers at the global box office, is intensifying as more and more people sample its hyper-violent storytelling. Directed by the provocateur Sandeep Reddy Vanga and starring Ranbir Kapoor, Animal has defied poor reviews and criticism for its perceived glorification of toxic masculinity to generate big numbers worldwide.

After just 12 days of release, the crime epic has grossed ₹757 crore (exactly $90 million) worldwide, according to producers T-Series, against a reported budget of around $11 million. Of this total, $55 million has come from its home country, India, while $12 million has come from domestic theaters. Animal is now just a few million short of overtaking this year’s two Shah Rukh Khan blockbusters — Pathaan and Jawan — at the domestic box office. While Pathaan grossed $17 million stateside earlier this year, and concluded its global run with $130 million, Jawan made $15 million domestically, but ended up grossing $138 million worldwide.

Both movies earned the unique distinction (for Bollywood titles) of having grossed more than $100 million worldwide in the same year, effectively cementing the beloved SRK’s stature as the greatest Indian movie star of his generation. Animal’s success is being viewed as a passing of the baton. Kapoor, who hails from “the first family of Bollywood,” now finds himself as the face of the country’s most divisive movie in recent years. He is now also the youngest star to lead an Indian film to such heights.

Concerns Have Been Raised About the Precedent that ‘Animal’ Is Setting

Animal is currently the third-biggest Indian film of the year, and the ninth-biggest of all time. The movie is also on track to join Pathaan and Jawan in the $100 million club, which it should gain membership to by the end of its third weekend. The film’s success comes despite a trio of factors such as an unusually (even for Bollywood) long run-time of nearly three and a half hours, a restrictive A rating — that’s the Indian equivalent of an R — and backlash against its portrayal of women.

The film’s director, Vanga, drew similar complaints for his first film, the Telugu-language hit Arjun Reddy, and to an even greater degree, its Hindi remake, Kabir Singh. Both those movies did gangbusters at the box office, and in his short, three-film career, Vanga has established himself as a bankable figure. He’s one of the few Indian directors working in the mainstream who can attract audiences on the strength of his name alone. But the jury’s still out on whether that’s a good thing or not. Also starring Rashmika Mandanna, Bobby Deol and Anil Kapoor, Animal has a “rotten” 28% score on the aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes. You can watch the film in theaters, and stay tuned to Collider for more updates.