Vismaya Mohanlal has begun her big-screen journey on a strong commercial note. Jude Anthany Joseph’s Thudakkam has reportedly registered the highest opening-day worldwide gross for a female-led Malayalam film, edging past Kalyani Priyadarshan’s Lokah: Chapter 1 – Chandra.

According to figures from box office tracker Sacnilk, Thudakkam earned an estimated Rs 2.55 crore net in India on its opening day, with the film playing across 1,102 shows. Its India gross was estimated at Rs 2.96 crore, while the film added another Rs 3.90 crore from overseas markets. This puts its estimated worldwide opening at Rs 6.86 crore.

The figure gives Thudakkam a narrow lead over Lokah: Chapter 1 – Chandra, which opened with a worldwide gross of Rs 6.63 crore. The Kalyani Priyadarshan-led superhero film had a stronger showing in India, collecting an estimated Rs 2.70 crore net and Rs 3.13 crore gross from 1,360 shows on its first day. Its overseas haul stood at Rs 3.50 crore.

The difference between the two films ultimately came from their overseas performance. While Lokah registered the better India numbers on Day 1, Thudakkam’s international gross was higher by around Rs 40 lakh, allowing the Jude Anthany Joseph directorial to claim the record.

Vismaya’s debut draws strong interest

The opening is significant given the attention surrounding Vismaya’s transition into acting. The daughter of Malayalam superstar Mohanlal, Vismaya takes centre stage in Thudakkam, which places her character in a dangerous situation where survival depends on her ability to respond to increasingly difficult circumstances.

Directed by Jude Anthany Joseph, the film blends elements of family drama and thriller as it follows a young woman pushed into a fight-or-flight situation. The narrative centres on themes of courage, resilience and hope, with the protagonist forced to make choices that have consequences for her and those around her.

The film’s commercial prospects had also been closely watched ahead of release, given the combination of Vismaya’s debut, Mohanlal’s presence in the cast and Jude’s profile following the success of 2018.

Thudakkam also marks the acting debut of Aashish Joe Antony, son of producer Antony Perumbavoor, who has a prominent role in the film. The cast additionally features Mohanlal, Sai Kumar, Bobby Kurian, Manoj K Jayan, Ganesh Kumar, Aswin, Essa, Kottayam Ramesh, Jaya Kurup and Jaffar Idukki.

Thudakkam gains momentum after opening day

The film’s early trajectory has shown signs of growth beyond its opening-day performance. According to subsequent box office estimates, Thudakkam recorded a sizeable increase on its second day, taking its India net total to Rs 6.05 crore and its overseas collection to Rs 8.40 crore.

By its third day, the film reportedly collected Rs 4.25 crore in India, taking its India net beyond the Rs 10 crore mark, while its overseas gross reached Rs 11.40 crore.

The early numbers suggest that the film has managed to convert the curiosity surrounding Vismaya’s debut into audience footfalls, particularly in overseas markets. It also gives Thudakkam an early distinction in Malayalam cinema, with its opening now standing ahead of Lokah among female-led films.

For Vismaya, the response marks an encouraging beginning to what could be an interesting new chapter in her career. With Thudakkam now gaining momentum through its opening weekend, the film’s ability to sustain that interest in the coming days will determine how significant the debut ultimately becomes at the box office.

Also Read: Thudakkam Review: Vismaya Mohanlal Makes A Confident Debut In A Familiar Survival Thriller

There’s a particular kind of luck in Hindi cinema that has nothing to do with a hit song or a box office number. It’s the luck of being cast right, of a director looking at an actor everyone thinks they’ve figured out and deciding to use him differently. Twenty-five years ago, Farhan Akhtar had that instinct about Saif Ali Khan. Saif, by his own admission, nearly talked himself out of it.

By 2001, Saif had spent close to a decade being Bollywood’s reliable second lead and baby-face hero. Pleasant, well-dressed, entirely disposable, the “chocolate hero” tag wasn’t a back-handed compliment, but it wasn’t a career epithet either. It was a holding pattern. Then came Sameer from DCH. He was chaotic, needy, hopelessly unlucky in love, and very funny about it and something clicked that none of his ’90s filmography had managed to. It was nothing like the Saif Ali Khan from Main Khiladi Tu Anari, Yeh Dillagi and Hum Saath Saath Hain.

The Dance That Did the Talking

Ask anyone to name the moment Dil Chahta Hai announces what Saif can do, and it isn’t a dialogue. It’s Woh Ladki Hai Kahan, the cult song where Sameer spins his imagination in a theatre with Sonali Kulkarni, dancing like yesteryear heroes, doing a bit that’s part slapstick, part genuine ache. It’s a song built entirely on physical comic timing, and Saif treats it like an actor’s showcase rather than a filler track. That’s the thing about star-making moments, they rarely look like career strategy in the moment. They look like an actor being fully, unselfconsciously present in a scene that could have been thrown away. Farhan Akhtar handed him the opening; Saif’s commitment to looking foolish, to being the butt of his own joke without ever losing the audience’s affection, is what turned it into an entry point to a different phase of his career. Especially iconic was Sameer getting conned by the girlfriend, tied up in his hotel room in Goa, needing a rescue by his besties. It was a FRIENDS redux Bollywood ishtyle.

It’s easy to forget now, but Sameer could have been a thankless part. The comic-relief friend orbiting Aamir Khan’s Akash and Akshaye Khanna’s Sid, the two “serious” arcs of the film. Saif has spoken about almost passing on the role for exactly that reason, worried he had too little to do in the second half. What he actually walked away with was harder to quantify than screen time: proof, on record, that he could hold his own inside an ensemble without needing the film’s emotional weight to rest on him. That distinction mattered more than anyone realised at the time.

From Ensemble Player to Leading Man

What Dil Chahta Hai did wasn’t make Saif a star overnight. It did something more useful, it gave casting directors and producers a new file to put him in. Not the hero of a formula romance, but an actor who could be funny and wounded in the same breath, who was comfortable playing off other actors rather than carrying a frame alone.

You can trace a direct line from Sameer to Rohit in Kal Ho Naa Ho (2003), another performance built on being the best friend (matching SRK’s charisma and allure, pound for pound) rather than the object of desire, and one that won him another Filmfare trophy, for Best Actor in a Supporting Role. It’s a strange kind of tribute to Dil Chahta Hai that Saif’s next big win came for essentially refining the same skill: making warmth and humour do dramatic work.

Hum Tum (2004) is where the dividend really showed up. As Karan Kapoor, the commitment-phobic cartoonist opposite Rani Mukerji, Saif got a more conventional male lead and the film rewarded him with a National Film Award for Best Actor and a Filmfare for Best Actor in a Comic Role. It’s not a coincidence that his first true solo stardom arrived through a rom-com built on exactly the register Dil Chahta Hai had unlocked, charm laced with self-deprecation, timing over swagger.

Then he went and did the opposite. Omkara (2006) is the film that proves Dil Chahta Hai wasn’t a genre lock it was a talent reveal. Playing Langda Tyagi, Vishal Bhardwaj’s Uttar Pradesh update of Iago, Saif buried the chocolate boy so completely that the performance won him the Filmfare Award for Best Performance in a Negative Role, in what turned out to be the category’s final year. Nobody watching Sameer sulk his way through a break-up in 2001 would have predicted this… A coiled, menacing, entirely unglamorous piece of screen villainy. That’s the real inheritance of Dil Chahta Hai. Not a type, but the industry’s willingness to see Saif as an actor rather than a fixed screen persona.

The half-decade in between is where we saw him test that range with real intent. Ek Hasina Thi (2004) cast him as a manipulative con man opposite Urmila Matondkar, trading entirely on the audience’s goodwill toward him and then curdling it, which only works if the audience has affection to spare in the first place. Being Cyrus (2006), the off-beat Homi Adajania film, is a hard swerve into arthouse-adjacent territory that a pre-2001 Saif would never have been offered, let alone taken. Parineeta (2005) put him back in classic leading-man mode, but the film’s real pleasure is in the triangle. Saif’s Shekhar, Vidya Balan’s Lalita, and Sanjay Dutt’s Girish, three actors continually recalibrating against each other. It’s a film that only works if its lead is generous enough to let scenes belong to his co-stars, and that generosity, that ease with sharing space rather than dominating it is Sameer’s DNA showing up again, four years and several genres later.

By the time Love Aaj Kal arrived in 2009, Saif wasn’t just playing romantic leads, he was producing them, shaping the kind of modern, emotionally messy love story that Dil Chahta Hai had helped establish as commercially viable. It’s a tidy bookend to the decade. The actor who once nearly passed on a supporting role now steering an entire film’s tone and casting from the producer’s chair.

Where the Page Turns

2001 to 2009 is the Dil Chahta Hai decade. The run in which nearly every big swing Saif took, comic or dramatic, drew credibility from that first ensemble performance. What comes after is a different actor making a different case for himself. Agent Vinod (2012), Go Goa Gone (2013), Sacred Games (2018), and Tanhaji (2020) belong to a Saif interested in genre, ambiguity, and reinvention on harder terms. Spy thriller, zombie comedy, prestige streaming villainy, historical actioner. That’s a separate essay. But none of it happens without the first one. Dil Chahta Hai didn’t just launch Saif Ali Khan’s best decade, it’s the reason he got to keep having new ones.

Twenty-five years on, the film is remembered, correctly, as a landmark for what it said about friendship and Bombay’s urban youth. For Saif specifically, it’s simpler than that. It’s the movie that stopped people from seeing him as a type, and allowed him to be the actor he was meant to be.

ALso Read: 20 Years of Omkara: Revisiting Powerful Dialogues That Made Saif Ali Khan’s Langda Tyagi Impactful

Ascribe it to the pan-India phenomenon! South Indian superstars are increasingly allocating more time to their ambitious projects. Actors like Yash, Mahesh Babu and Jr NTR are committing three to four years to high-stakes films. Their focus has shifted from having rapid commercial releases to pursuing a massive-scale cinematic vision.