Director Balaji Tharaneetharan's film Baththa, featuring Vijay Sethupathi in the lead role, continued its solid start at the box office on Saturday. According to data from the box office tracker Sacnilk, the film earned 4.88 crore from theatres in India over the first two days of its release. On Saturday, it earned a net collection of 2.75 crore. So far this Sunday, the film has minted 1.09 crore (net). On the whole, the Baththa box office collection stands at 9.37 (gross), taking the latest Sunday figures into account. According to the tracker, the number of shows for the film in India went up from 1187 on Friday to 1222 on Saturday.
The film has brought Vijay Sethupathi back together with Balaji Tharaneetharan following collaborations on 2012's Naduvula Konjam Pakkatha Kaanom and 2018's Seethakaathi. It tells the story of a fearsome gangster (Vijay Sethupathi) who gets locked in a school toilet by a boy (Sai Prithvi Raj) by chance. Lijomol Jose, Ajay Ghosh, and Arjun Chidambaram are also part of the film's cast.
Lijomol plays the onscreen wife of Vijay Sethupathi's character in the film. Produced by Murad Khetani, Priya Atlee, Alok Jain and Ajit Andhare, as well as being presented by Atlee, Baththa's technical team includes composer Sai Abhyankkar, cinematographer Selva Kumar SK, editor R Kalaivanan, and production designer T Muthuraj.
In our review, Prashanth Vallavan wrote, "Baththa has the distinct charm of offering whatever you want out of it. It could be a fun commercial family entertainer if you choose to look at it that way, or it could read as a parable on an arrogant man’s ego death. The film is also a deep psychological dissection of how much of the human experience, the choices we make, are dictated by the far simpler unconscious imprints left by our childhood."
