Coolie Falls Below Leo / Nagarjuna faces backlash

 Rajinikanth and NTR Jr missed creating box office history and Thalapathy Vijay is still the King of Kollywood Box Office. Cooolie Directed by Lokesh surpassed two out of three films from his own LCU (Lokesh Cinematic Universe). His film Kaithi collected Rs 6.4 cr on its opening day, while the Kamal Haasan-starrer Vikram minted Rs 37.5 crore on its first day. The only film that Coolie couldn’t surpass was Leo, starring Vijay, Trisha Krishnan, Sanjay Dutt, and Arjun Sarja. The 2023 film made an impressive Rs 76.2 crore on its first day and went on to make Rs 341 crore. Even though Coolie couldn’t beat Leo’s opening, it did leave behind several of Rajinikanth’s previous films. Coolie beat TJ Gnanavel’s Vettaiyan (Rs 31.5 cr), Nelson Dilipkumar’s Jailer (Rs 48.35 cr), Karthik Subbaraj’s Petta (Rs 14 cr), and S Shankar’s 2.0 (Rs 23 cr)

In Telugu states the film has collected more than 20 Cr gross and become the 1st ever film to do this from Kollywood. Pan-Indian star Prabhas has a rare record of a hat trick of 100 Cr opening grossers with Adipurush,  Salaar, and Kalki 2898 AD. Not even SRK could achieve it.  NTR’s last 2 films, RRR and Devara, opened with more than 100 Cr, and everyone expected that the War sequel will easily score an opening of 100 Cr and NTR will join this club.

But War 2 fails to open with 100 Cr+, and with that, NTR fails to match Prabhas’s record.

 

Nagarjuna villain act in Coolie has not gone down well with his core audience, They feel that he should stop accepting character roles and instead wait for right scripts and stage a comenack and point out Venkatesh as an example. Nag played a crucial character in Kuberaa, and it resulted in a mixed response from fans, as they liked his role in the 1st half, as there was a good balance, but in the 2nd half, the character was sidelined, and the film completely moved on to Dhanush’s side. After watching  Coolie , even the neutral audiences are disappointed, and fans are furious with Nagarjuna, as they are angry that he could do such a regular villain character for his stature.