'Thug Life' box office collection day 1: Kamal Haasan's latest film trails behind 'Indian 2' on opening day

Kamal Haasan's latest film Thug Life had a decent opening at the domestic box office on Thursday. Thug Life earned a total of ₹17 crore on its day 1 at the domestic box office.

Of this, the film's Tamil shows raked in ₹15.4 crore, whereas its Telugu shows made ₹1.5 crore, and its Hindi shows earned a measly ₹0.1 crore at the ticket counters, as per film trade portal Sacnilk. 

The film's shows on Thursday logged decent occupancy, with its Tamil shows taking the lead. The film's Tamil shows had an overall occupancy of 52.06 per cent, with its night shows logging the highest occupancy at 62.07 per cent.

Thug Life's Hindi shows had an overall occupancy rate of 5.79 per cent, with its afternoon shows recording the highest occupancy at 6.61 per cent. The film's Telugu shows recorded an overall 21.36 per cent occupancy, with afternoon shows logging the highest occupancy at 23.61 per cent.

With this, the film's day-one earnings are less than those of Kamal Haasan's previous film, Indian 2, which received terrible reviews for its unrealistic action sequences and storytelling. 

Indian 2 raked in ₹25.6 crore on its opening day at the domestic box office. Of this, the film's Tamil shows earned ₹16.5 crore while its Telugu and Hindi shows raked in ₹7.9 crore and ₹1.2 crore, respectively. 

The box office numbers are not a surprise since Thug Life opened to poor reviews. While some social media users flagged faults in the film's second half, others said that Indian 2 was much better. 

A social media user commented: "Shock of the year.  Indian 2 >> Thug Life as a movie and never in a million years would I have thought Mani Ratnam would make such a third class outdated boring and terrible film . Him and Kamal Haasan should get belt treatment for promoting the biggest scam of the year!"

"We never imagined that Kamal Haasan could star in a worse film than #Indian2, but Mani Ratnam proved us wrong. #ThugLife is the first Mani Ratnam movie you should skip not just in theatres, but even on OTT or YouTube, even if it’s free," another user said. 

Directed by Mani Ratnam, the film follows mafia kingpin Sakthivel and his brother Manickam, who rescue a boy from a police shootout, but face vengeance if a twist of fate leads them.

Besides Kamal Haasan, the film stars Silambarasan, Trisha Krishnan, Abhirami, Nassar, Joju George, Aishwarya Lekshmi, Ali Fazal, and Ashok Selvan in significant roles.