In a surprise, the Indian action film Dhurandhar: The Revenge is exceeding expectations at the box office and setting new records in North America. Directed by Aditya Dhar, the sequel to the 2025 movie Dhurandhar stars actor Ranveer Singh as a covert operative in a story that has attracted controversy for combining real historical events with fictional elements. Interestingly, the original cut was meant to be a single film but given the scale of the narrative and the amount of footage that was shot, it was split into two parts, a gambit that has helped the duology become a box office hit. Clocking in at 3 hours and 50 minutes, Dhurandhar: The Revenge released in theaters on March 19, which is just over three months after the first film came out on December 5, 2025.
Is Dhurandhar: The Revenge a box office success?
As of March 31, Dhurandhar: The Revenge has earned over $147 million worldwide, $22.6 million coming stateside and $124.8 million coming overseas, as reported by Box Office Mojo.
Its cumulative domestic total has already broken the record for an Indian movie at the North American box office, which was previously held by the $20.2 million set by 2017’s Baahubali 2: The Conclusion. The majority of its $124.9 million international total comes from India at $110 million, but it has also performed well in other countries, particularly in the United Kingdom ($4.4 million), Germany ($1 million), and Australia ($4.1 million).
Looking at the numbers, this spy thriller sequel can already be considered a box office success despite it only being in theaters for two weeks. According to a source speaking with Bollywood Hungama, the total cost of shooting both films came out to around $27 million (or ₹250 crore), which means that the pair only needed to go past the $68 million mark for it to break even (that is, if we apply the general rule of multiplying the budget by 2.5 to this foreign film).
Given that the first film has earned $137 million worldwide, the duology had become profitable without including any results for the second film. In what is essentially extra credit, Dhurandhar: The Revenge will only add to those totals; in fact, doubling them if we’re just considering its two-week results. It’s difficult to say how far the movie will go over its full theatrical run.
A part of the difficulty comes from how unexpected the movie’s success has been domestically. In a March 6 report from BoxOfficeTheory, the film was only projected to earn somewhere between $2 million and $5 million in its opening weekend and then between $6 million and $15 million overall. Dhurandhar: The Revenge was coming out during the same week as Project Hail Mary and Ready or Not 2: Here I Come, so competition was expected to be high. But then in just a week, its projections leapt to a $6M to $10M opening weekend and a $12M to $25M overall run.
Even with this upgraded forecast, the sequel smashed expectations in its launch. The film earned just over $10 million in its domestic opening weekend from 987 locations ($14 million if we extend that to its 5-day weekend run). Globally, it earned $56 million, an impressive result behind Project Hail Mary’s $141 million opener.
Much of its success has been attributed to the first film having built a considerable fanbase and positive word-of-mouth. Having the sequel come out mere months after the original film has helped in maintaining momentum and striking while the iron is hot. While Dhurandhar: The Revenge has received low critic ratings on Rotten Tomatoes so far, with only a 40% Tomatometer score based on 15 reviews, the film has a much higher rating with fans at a 95% Popcornmeter score.
