Aamir Khan film Dangal is now India’s highest grossing film after taking Rs3.45 billion (Dh185 million) at the country’s box office.
The sports drama, directed by Nitesh Tiwari, is based on the life of wrestler Mahavir Singh Phogat.
Dangal released on December 23 in India and collected Rs143.3 million on January 8, taking the total to Rs3.45 billion, read a statement.
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.”
PK, which also featured Khan in the lead, was released in 2014 and made Rs3.37 billion.
Dangal has been lauded by audiences for its powerful portrayal of the story of Phogat, who trains his daughters Geeta and Babita to wrestle.
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.”
