Aamir breaks his own record: Dangal beats PK

With Dangal registering a collection of Rs 345.3 crore, Bollywood star Aamir Khan has created a new record for the highest Hindi grosser, beating the business of his own movie PK. The film’s makers are overwhelmed. The sports drama film, directed by Nitesh Tiwari, took a leaf out of wrestler Mahavir Singh Phogat’s real life.

Dangal, which released on December 23 last year, collected Rs 14.33 crore on January 8, taking the cumulative total to Rs 345.3 crore (nett India box office), read a statement issued on behalf of the makers.

Amrita Pandey, Vice President, Studios, Disney India, said: “Dangal is an extremely special film for us at Disney, Aamir Khan and the entire cast and crew of the film. This is our ninth film with Aamir Khan, and with Dangal we’ve broken our own record of PK. Aamir has set new benchmarks with each of his movies.”

Dangal has been lauded by the audiences for its powerful portrayal of the story of Phogat, who, much to the disapproval of his wife and his whole village, trained his daughters Geeta and Babita to wrestle.

Christmas has turned out to be lucky for Aamir since the past few years. Even PK, Dhoom: 3 and 3 Idiots released around the festival and their success gave the actor more reasons to celebrate.

According to Pandey, “Dangal is breaking and setting new distribution circuit benchmarks all over India, in centres in key south markets, in Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Rajasthan and Central India. Even in key international markets like North America and Australia, Dangal is setting new benchmarks.”

“In fact, in North America, the movie is set to be the highest grossing foreign language movie for 2016. Dangal is also the highest performing Hindi movie dubbed in Tamil language, beating the previous record of The Jungle Book.”