Madras Cafe
Madras CafeTwitter/Madras Cafe

"Madras Cafe" starring John Abraham and Nargis Fakri continues to rock at the domestic box office despite competition from "Chennai Express" and "Once Upon A Time In Mumbaai Dobaara", earning over ₹33.81 crore in just one week.

The political thriller directed by Shoojit Sircar and produced by John Abraham and Viacom 18 Motion Pictures received good reviews from film critics, which reflected at the box office by collecting ₹5.23 crore on the opening day.

"#MadrasCafe collects Rs 33.81 cr in Week 1: Fri 5.23 cr, Sat 7.18 cr, Sun 8.60 cr, Mon 3.05 cr, Tue 3.14 cr, Wed 3.86 cr, Thu *est* 2.75 cr." Tweeted trade analyst Taran Adarsh.

"#MadrasCafe *total till Wed night* UK - did not release ... Australia A$ 63,811 [Rs 38.65 lacs]." He added.

The low-budget film reportedly recovered production cost on the sixth day into its release despite not seeing the light of the day in Tamil Nadu state following threats from political outfits alleging that it portrayed LTTE in bad light.

Interestingly, "Madras Cafe" did better than "Chennai Express" at the domestic box office in the last seven days. The Shah Rukh Khan and Deepika Padukone starrer collected ₹2.12 crore on Friday, Saturday ₹3.61 crore, Sunday ₹4.75 crore, Monday ₹1.63 crore, Tuesday ₹1.74 crore, Wednesday ₹2.46 crore and Thursday ₹1.56 crore, taking the total to 17.87 crore, according to Taran Adarsh. However, "Madras Cafe" earned ₹33.81 crore in the last one week.

Meanwhile, "OUATIMD" which was released on Independence Day (15 August), has witnessed downhill trend in the last few days, and the release of "Madras Cafe" further affected its collection. It has earned only ₹59 crore in 11 days and is bound to be a flop.

"Madras Cafe" is expected to rake in some more revenue despite the release of Prakash Jha's latest flick, "Satyagraha" starring Amitabh Bachchan, Ajay Devgn, Kareena Kapoor Khan, Arjun Rampal, Manoj Bajpai and Amrita Rao. Both the film belong to same genre - political thriller - but John Abraham starrer is expected to maintain its stronghold at the box office for a few more days and earn more profit for its makers.