Rajinikanth's Petta has captalised on the positive response given by the critics and audience, as the movie has performed well at the Tamil Nadu box office on its day two. Despite facing huge competition from Ajith's Viswasam, the Thalaivar's flick has pulled the audience to theatres in good numbers.
The multilingual movie was released to a lot of hype on Thursday, 10 January. Although the special shows did not happen like usual, Petta got an impressive non-holiday opening by raking in Rs 13 crore. It turned out to be the ninth biggest opener in Tamil Nadu and fourth biggest opener of Rajini after Kabali (Rs 21.5 crore), 2.0 (Rs 18.2 crore) and Kaala (Rs 15.4 crore).
The good word-of-mouth made exhibitors increase the shows on the second day for Petta as it got over 390 shows (from less than 200 shows on the first day). Going by the trade buzz, the Karthik Subbaraj's film had 45+ percent occupancy for the morning shows, increased to 60-70 percent for the noon shows and crossed 80 percentage-mark for the evening and night shows.
A rough estimation coming from the trade trackers say that Petta has added close to Rs 9 crore on the second day to take its total two-day total to Rs 22 crore. In the capital city of Tamil Nadu alone, the Rajinikanth's movie has earned over Rs 2.20 crore. Chennai, Chengalpet and Tirunelveli-Kanniyakumari areas are its strong hold where it is doing an impressive collection.
In these centres, exhibitors have preferred Petta to other Pongal release Viswasam, which has performed better than the Rajinikanth-starrer in entire Tamil Nadu, while losing out to Rajini's flick outisde the state.
Industry insiders are of the opinion that Petta has the content which is being liked by his hardcore fans and family audience. Hence, the Sun Pictures-produced flick is expected to set the box office on fire in the days to come.
