Salman Khan and his ‘blockbuster’ success during Eid

Salman Khan is arguably the biggest superstar in India and the festive weekend of Eid has over the year been dominated by his film releases.

It all started with Prabhu Deva’s ‘Wanted’ back in 2009, when Salman was going through the worst phase of his career. The film didn’t do well at multiplexes, but brought back his audience in smaller towns. ‘Wanted’ was a massive hit at single-screens.

A year later, ‘Dabangg’ turned to be a turning point in his career as the film not only broken the opening records of Aamir Khan’s acclaimed film ‘3 Idiots’, but also went on to be one of the most loved Salman Khan films. It was also the first Salman film in a long time to do well at multiplexes.

Since then, Salman has been unstoppable, at single-screens, multiplexes, cities, towns, villages, everywhere! ‘Bodyguard’ smashed the opening records of ‘Dabangg’ by a huge margin and was the first film to collect Rs 20 crore on a single day.

Then came ‘Ek Tha Tiger’, which trounced the opening day record of all previous films and became the first to collect Rs 30 crore or more on a single day.

2013 was the only year in the last 7 years that didn’t have a Salman Khan film during Eid and his good-friend Shahrukh made the most of it with Rohit Shetty’s Chennai Express becoming the highest grossing film of all time.

Despite Salman’s super-stardom in recent years, the one record that he hasn’t been able to conquer is the record for the highest Hindi grosser of all time. The same team of his latest release ‘Bajrangi Bhaijaan’ came very close to breaking the record of 3 Idiots, but fell short by just 3 crore. This time around, the target is yet another Rajkumar Hirani classic which grossed Rs 340 crore in India last year.

For Salman and his ‘Bajrangi Bhaijaan’ team, it would take an extraordinary film, carrying incredible word-of-mouth to get close to ‘PK’. But with films like ‘Tanu Weds Manu Returns’, on limited screens and cheaper ticket prices, grossing 150 crore, the ‘PK’ record is not completely out of reach. All that a big film like ‘Bajrangi Bhaijaan’ needs is to strike a chord with the audience.

The pre-release reports of ‘Bajrangi Bhaijaan’ are excellent and if the film exceeds expectations, it has every chance of topping ‘PK’.

Check out the history of Eid releases in the last few years. Every Salman Khan Eid film, except Wanted, has become a blockbuster or better. Will history repeat itself this Eid?

Movie	Screens	Opening Day	Lifetime	Verdict
Wanted (2009)	1400	5.2 cr	61 cr	Super Hit
Dabangg (2010)	1900	15.1 cr*	143 cr	All Time Blockbuster
Bodyguard (2011)	2800	21.4 cr*	145 cr	Blockbuster
Ek Tha Tiger (2012)	3400	32.9 cr*	199 cr	Blockbuster
Chennai Express (2013)	3600	33.1 cr*	227 cr	All Time Blockbuster
Kick (2014)	4000	26.5 cr	233 cr	Blockbuster
Bajrangi Bhaijaan (2015)	4100	27.25 cr	321 cr	All Time Blockbuster
Sultan (2016)	4400	36.54 cr*	301 cr	All Time Blockbuster

Also, vote for Salman’s best film during Eid.