Dhurandhar 2: The Revenge has set a new all-time record on BookMyShow, selling 14.81 lakh tickets exactly 24 hours before its March 19, 2026 release, surpassing Shah Rukh Khan‘s Jawan to become the highest pre-release ticket seller in Bollywood history on the platform. With 8 hours still remaining before the first show, the figure had climbed further to approximately 1.68 million tickets, with trade trackers projecting the 2 million mark before the opening credits roll. According to BookMyShow data cited by trade analyst Filmy View, no Hindi film has come close to this volume at the pre-release stage.
How Does Dhurandhar 2 Compare to Every Major Bollywood Film in BookMyShow Pre-Release Ticket Sales?
The 24-hour pre-release benchmark is the cleanest comparison available across films, as it captures final booking momentum at the same point in each film’s run-up to release. Dhurandhar 2 at 14.81 lakh is 34.4 percent ahead of Jawan’s previous record of 11.02 lakh, the largest gap ever recorded between the top two positions on this list.
| Rank | Film | Year | Tickets at 24-Hr Mark | Total Pre-Release |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Dhurandhar 2: The Revenge | 2026 | 14.81 Lakh | ~1.68M (8 hrs to go) |
| 2 | Jawan | 2023 | 11.02 Lakh | ~1.65M |
| 3 | Animal | 2023 | 7.24 Lakh | ~1.26M |
| 4 | Tiger 3 | 2023 | 4.73 Lakh | N/A |
| 5 | Chhaava | 2025 | 4.69 Lakh | 12M (full run) |
How Fast Has Dhurandhar 2 Been Selling Tickets on BookMyShow?
BookMyShow was recording over 10,200 tickets sold every hour at peak momentum for Dhurandhar 2, according to trade reports citing platform data. For context, Jawan’s peak hourly rate was 20,260 tickets, and Animal briefly hit 80,000 tickets in a single hour at its highest point. Dhurandhar 2’s sustained pace across a longer booking window is what has driven its total so high. The key distinction is volume over velocity: Dhurandhar 2 maintained consistent booking demand over multiple days rather than a single explosive spike, which points to genuine wide-audience interest rather than concentrated fan-base activity in one brief window.
How Quickly Has the Dhurandhar Franchise Rewritten Bollywood’s Box Office Benchmarks?
The speed of this franchise’s rise is without precedent in modern Bollywood. The original Dhurandhar, directed by Aditya Dhar and released in December 2025, sold 3.31 million tickets in its opening week on BookMyShow, placing it 8th on the all-time first-week sales list, a list otherwise dominated by Shah Rukh Khan, Ranbir Kapoor, and Shraddha Kapoor films. Just three months later, its sequel has already smashed the 24-hour pre-release record that Jawan held for over two years. Dhar’s own journey mirrors that acceleration: he debuted with URI: The Surgical Strike in 2019, winning the National Film Award for Best Direction, before building B62 Studios from scratch and taking Ranveer Singh into a franchise that is now rewriting platform records. URI opened at roughly ₹36 crore on Day 1. Dhurandhar 1 became the highest-grossing Hindi film in India at the time of its release. Dhurandhar 2 enters with pre-release numbers that no Bollywood film has ever touched.
What Target Does This Set for Ramayana and Future Bollywood Releases?
The 2 million pre-release ticket target that Dhurandhar 2 is chasing is now the benchmark every future tentpole will be measured against. Ramayana Part 1, directed by Nitesh Tiwari and starring Ranbir Kapoor as Ram, Yash as Ravana, and Sai Pallavi as Sita, releases on Diwali 2026 with a reported budget of over ₹4,000 crore across both parts and a music score shared by AR Rahman and Hans Zimmer. A test screening in Los Angeles in early 2026 drew strong praise for its visual scale and VFX quality. Trade circles are already predicting a Day 1 opening of ₹200 crore or more across languages, which would require a pre-release ticket volume that makes Dhurandhar 2’s current record look modest by comparison.
Whether Ramayana can get to 3 million or beyond on BookMyShow alone will be one of the defining box office questions of 2026. Chhaava’s 12 million total tickets across its full run, making it the first Hindi film to achieve that number on the platform, gives a sense of how high the ceiling can go when content and stardom align. Ramayana has both. The target is now visible, and it is considerably larger than anything Indian cinema has recorded before.