Horror Wins: Stree, The Nun Give Paltan, Laila Majnu Sleepless Nights

Horror is the new king, if India's box office results are anything to go by in the past 10 days. Stree, starring Shraddha Kapoor, Rajkummar Rao, and Pankaj Tripathi, is doing scarily well at the box office. You can say say that the film, which released last Friday, is making a real killing, in fact. Keeping the horror-comedy company is The Nun, the latest installment of the Conjuring franchise. Both the films have commanded ticket sales and are leading in collections.

While Stree has managed to collect close to Rs 75 Crore within its less than 10 day run, The Nun has collected a respectable Rs 18 Crore on its opening weekend.

Film analyst trade Taran Adarsh said: Stree continues to dazzle... Gathers speed on Sat... Growth on Sat [vis-à-vis Fri]: 73.80%... Expectedly, Sun should score higher numbers... [Week 2] Fri 4.39 cr, Sat 7.63 cr. Total: ₹ 72.41 cr. India biz.

Meanwhile, despite getting mixed reviews, The Nun dominated this new week's releases, trading on the goodwill of the Conjuring franchise, and managed to collect the largest opening out of all the movies from the horror series released so far.

Adarsh wrote: "Braving mixed reviews and word of mouth, #TheNun⁠ ⁠continues its dominance at the ticket windows... ₹ 30 cr [+/-] weekend on the cards... Thu previews 30 lakhs, Fri 8 cr, Sat 10.20 cr. Total: ₹ 18.50 cr."

Given Stree's success, its makers are determined to keep the good times going. As per a report in Bollywoodlife, producer Dinesh Vijan stated that the makers kept an open ending of the film so that they can pick up the sequel from there. He said “The film’s last two shots actually set up the sequel. When you watch the movie, you will understand that we had an open ending intentionally. Stree 2 will start off from there and explain those shots. We have written it as a franchise, so there will be a sequel. We are happy that the confidence in the content has paid off.”

Talking of the retention of the cast, he says "The cast will be retained, but there will be new inclusions too. Predominantly, it will still be driven by Raj and Shraddha’s characters.”