Bajrangi Bhaijaan China box office collection at $45.4 million; global revenues amount to Rs 905 crore

Salman Khan's Bajrangi Bhaijaan, which landed in mainland cinemas on 2 March for the Lantern Festival weekend, has winded up its China run with a $45.3 million (Rs 294 crore) cumulative box-office haul. Now, the running global total of the film stands at Rs 905.3 crore with the overall foreign box-office receipts amounting to $74.3 million (Rs 483.2 crore).

Salman Khan and Harshaali Malhotra in Bajrangi Bhaijaan

Although the film missed entering the Rs 300-crore club in the Middle Kingdom, the fact that it has survived a bevy of Hollywood movies including the Academy Award-winning ones like Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri and The Shape of Water substantiates Chinese moviegoers' newfound zeal for Indian movies.

Bajrangi Bhaijaan has finished its place in the 2018 quarterly box-office chart as the eighth highest-grossing import film in China, just above Star Wars: The Last Jedi and below Maze Runner: The Death Cure. Overall, the Kabir Khan-directed cross-drama is the sixteenth highest-grossing film in the first quarter of 2018 in the PRC. It's also one of the nine import films which earned above 200 million yuan this year in the world's second-largest movie market.

Bajrangi Bhaijaan, which stars Kareena Kapoor Khan, Harshaali Malhotra and Nawazuddin Siddiqui in essential roles, is the fourth highest-performing foreign film of March 2018 in China, only behind Black Panther, Pacific Rim: Uprising and Tomb Raider. It has managed to cross the $40 million mark in the Middle Kingdom without topping the box-office chart unlike Secret Superstar, which was the table-topper for the most of its China run.

Last week, Bajrangi Bhaijaan had dethroned Aamir Khan's Secret Superstar to emerge as the third highest-grossing Indian film of all-time. Now, Secret Superstar is gearing up for a release in Hong Kong, and the distributors have already started holding previews of the movie from Friday. The three-day total of previews accounts for HK$ 672,303 (₹ 55.71 lakhs), taking the film's global total to Rs. 894.6 crore. Considering the fact that Aamir Khan's Dangal grossed nearly $3.5 million to become the highest-grossing Indian film in Hong Kong, Secret Superstar is likely to register good numbers and will take the film's running total past Rs 900 crore.

Now, the race for the third highest-grossing Indian film gradually begins as Secret Superstar will also continue to open in South Korea and Japan over the next few weeks following the Hong Kong release. In all likelihood, it will take over the baton from Bajrangi Bhaijaan if it replicates the impressive China run in the other East Asian nations and push the Salman Khan-starrer to the fourth spot in the all-time highest-grossing Indian films list.