Hrithik Roshan’s War 2 vs Rajnikanth’s Coolie: Do all movies released on Independence Day become hits?

For most, this Independence Day quite literally means freedom, as a long weekend awaits. And with it come rosy times for multiplexes, thanks to a string of action-packed new movie releases. The weekend is set for a North-South clash between the Hrithik Roshan and NTR–starrer War 2 and the Rajinikanth and Aamir Khan–starrer Coolie. The films also feature Kiara Advani and Nagarjuna, respectively, raising the stakes even higher.

On its opening day Thursday, Coolie amassed ₹49.57 crore, compared with ₹35.97 crore for War 2. Interestingly, Coolie carries an A rating while War 2 has a UA16+ rating—both limiting access for a sizeable portion of the audience.

Here is a look at how the Independence Day weekend is shaping up for films released around the national holiday. Does August 15 freedom bring better box office collections to all films released then?

Around Independence Day, Indian cinema has often seen big-ticket releases dominate the box office. Aarakshan collected ₹64.40 crore in 2011, followed by Ek Tha Tiger in 2012 with a massive ₹320 crore, while Gangs of Wasseypur 2, which released the same day, managed to earn only ₹31.57 crore. In 2013, Once Upon a Time in Mumbaai Dobaara! managed ₹91.70 crore, but Chennai Express emerged as the blockbuster with ₹422 crore. The trend continued with Singham Returns raking in ₹216.56 crore in 2014, Brothers at ₹140 crore in 2015, Rustom at ₹216.35 crore in 2016, and Toilet: Ek Prem Katha grossing ₹316.97 crore in 2017.

Interestingly, films like Chennai Express and Ek Tha Tiger earned much of their collections within the first week of release, showing that films released over the Independence Day weekend tend to be highly profitable despite competition.

This also marked the start of the trend where a single leading starrer film would avoid clashing with another, as such clashes often proved unsuccessful for the films released alongside.

Satyamev Jayate, released in 2018, raked in ₹121 crore, with Gold garnering a much better ₹158 crore collection. In another Akshay Kumar and John Abraham clash, Batla House, released in 2019, amassed ₹127 crore, and Mission Mangal amassed ₹291 crore the following year. In 2022, just post-pandemic, Raksha Bandhan amassed only ₹68.38 crore, with Aamir Khan’s Laal Singh Chaddha amassing ₹133.5 crore.

Meanwhile, in 2024, Akhay Kumar-starrer OMG 2 amassed a worldwide collection of ₹221.75 crore, with Sunny Deol-starrer Gadar 2 amassing a whopping ₹686 crore. Finally, last year, Shraddha Kapoor and Rajkummar Rao’s Stree 2 garnered an all-time high of ₹857.15 crore, with its movie rivals Thangalaan, Khel Khel Mein, and Vedaa amassing only ₹69.8 crore, ₹57.05 crore, and ₹30 crore respectively.

This reveals a common pattern that while films began to be counterprogrammed only after COVID, releases over Independence Day perform better when the national holiday coincides with a weekend, giving more people the chance to visit cinema halls. Additionally, most patriotic-themed films tend to work well as Independence Day specials, often outperforming films with simpler themes.

This also reveals that while films may have been counterprogrammed post-COVID, only one of the two or three films released simultaneously is able to win bigger at the box office. This leaves filmmakers and multiplexes with a question that if going to a cinema is an activity that everyone associates with being time-consuming and money-consuming, then building newer cinema halls might not be the solution at all. Instead, the focus should be on making it a part of a regular outing, kind of like going to pickleball or other active experiences. The need is to make cinemagoing convenient enough and an active experience rather than a passive one, to enable viewers to choose it as their preferred pastime.