With a start of 29.78 crore on its first Friday, Dangal has entered the record books by emerging as the second biggest non-holiday opener ever. The list below features those films that didn’t have a holiday on Friday or Saturday.

Either a festival fell on a Sunday [Christmas for Dangal] which won’t make any difference to the collections or on the weekdays [Kick arrived on Eid] which doesn’t have any bearing on the Friday opening.

Dhoom: 3 – 36.22 crore

Dangal – 29.78 crore

PK – 27 crore

Kick – 26.52 crore

M.S. Dhoni – The Untold Story – 21.3 crore

Dabangg 2 – 21 crore

Dilwale – 21 crore

Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani – 19.45 crore

Fan – 19.2 crore

Ek Villain – 16.7 crore

What is noticeable about this is the fact that in this list, Aamir Khan tops with each of the three releases – Dhoom:3, Dangal and PK. This pretty much establishes the fact that at least when it comes to the opening day numbers, Aamir Khan hasn’t relied on a holiday. That said, he smartly brings his films around the time when holiday season is about to kick-start, what with each of these films arriving around Christmas and then leveraging from the festive and celebration season that goes way into the New Year as well.

Ditto for Salman Khan who brought his Kick and Dabangg 2 around Eid and Christmas respectively, hence benefitting in the weekdays instead of the opening day. Shahrukh Khan too has a couple of films in there, Dilwale and Fan, and in terms of pure non-holiday release it was the latter that was at disadvantage considering the fact that the second week for Dilwale stepped into the Christmas season. M.S. Dhoni – The Untold Story had Gandhi Jayanti falling on Sunday which negated the holiday advantage and the only two other films that didn’t have an advantage of a single day were Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani and Ek Villain.

That said, the list is primarily dominated by those in the business [Aamir Khan, Shahrukh Khan] who have been around for over 25 years, which makes it even sweeter for young blood like Sushant Singh Rajput [M.S. Dhoni – The Untold Story], Ranbir Kapoor [Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani] and Sidharth Malhotra/Riteish Deshmukh [Ek Villain] to find themselves into the list.

Note: All numbers as per production and distribution sources

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