Vijay's Mersal reached an important milestone on Wednesday, December 6. The movie completed its glorious 50-day run in theatres.
The movie was released on October 18 on the occasion of Deepavali festival. This year, the movie visibly had no competition from any other big movie, which became an advantage for the film to set the box office on fire.
Upon releasing, Mersal garnered fairly positive reviews. On the first day, the Vijay-starrer minted an earth-shattering Rs 47.1 crore at the worldwide box office from over 3,200 screens. It was declared the biggest opener in Tamil Nadu after Rajinikanth's Kabali, which minted Rs 21.5 crore in 2016, by grossing about Rs 24 crore.
The positive word-of-mouth and the unnecessary controversy around some critical comments on GST and demonetisation pulled the viewers to theatres in big numbers in the next few days. This helped the Tamil film to mint Rs 148 crore in its first weekend at the global box office.
The release of the Telugu version further boosted the collection in the weeks to come.
So far, Mersal has grossed over Rs 250 crore at the worldwide box office. In Tamil Nadu alone, it has grossed over Rs 120 crore.
Mersal is in the fifth place in the all-time highest grossing movies of South India. The list is dominated by multilingual films with two-part Baahubali series in the first two positions by minting Rs 1,700+ crore and Rs 600+ crore at the global box office.
Rajinikanth's Enthiran and Kabali are in the third and fourth positions by earning Rs 290+ crore and Rs 286 crore, respectively.
Atlee Kumar-directorial Mersal is bankrolled by Lyca Productions. Kajal Aggarwal, Samantha and Nithya Menen are in the female leads in the movie, which has SJ Suryah in the role of a villain.
The film is still being played on limited screens and had a decent number of shows at multiplexes in Chennai last weekend.
