Varun Dhawan’s attempt at a mass actioner, Baby John, had a lukewarm opening for a holiday release. The film hit theatres on Christmas Day on Wednesday and raked in Rs 12.5 crore at the box office as per industry tracker Sacnilk. The film, directed by Kalees and produced by Atlee, also stars Jackie Shroff, Keerthy Suresh, Wamiqa Gabbi and Rajpal Yadav.
Baby John’s opening numbers were unable to match the sixth and 21st day collections of Mufasa: The Lion King and Pushpa 2: The Rule, respectively. Pushpa 2 made Rs 19.75 crore on its 21st day and out of this total, Rs 15 crore came from their Hindi shows. Mufasa, which has also released across multiple languages, made Rs 14.25 crore on its sixth day.
As per Sacnilk, Baby John witnessed a 24.97 percent Hindi occupancy on its first day. The film was given 1046 shows in Delhi-NCR, which reported a 25.75 percent occupancy, and 801 shows in the Mumbai region, with 26.25 percent occupancy.
Baby John is Varun’s first theatrical release in two years. The last one was Amar Kaushik’s Bhediya (2022), which made Rs 7.48 crore on its first day. The film’s domestic run was till Rs 66.65 crore.