Dhamaal 4 Passes Housefull 2, But Its Record Rides Costlier Tickets

Dhamaal 4 has grossed 181.23 crore worldwide in eleven days, sliding past Housefull 2’s lifetime total to become actor Riteish Deshmukh’s fifth-biggest release ever. The Indra Kumar directed adventure comedy, led by Ajay Devgn, Arshad Warsi and Javed Jaffrey, is still adding to that number every day it stays in theaters, according to Koimoi’s day 11 tracking.

The climb is real. It also happened on a price ladder that looks nothing like the one Housefull 2 climbed in 2012, when a movie ticket in India cost a fraction of what it does today.

Dhamaal 4 Overtakes Housefull 2 on the Career Ledger

The day 11 numbers break down cleanly. Dhamaal 4 has collected 134.10 crore net in India, which works out to about 158.23 crore gross once taxes are added back in (net is the distributor’s share before tax, gross includes it). Overseas markets have added another 23 crore gross, pushing the worldwide total to 181.23 crore.

That is enough to edge past Housefull 2’s final worldwide count of 179.2 crore, a film led by Akshay Kumar and Riteish Deshmukh that closed its 2012 run at 106 crore net in India, 147.22 crore gross domestically and 31.93 crore gross overseas, according to Bollywood Hungama’s box office database. Dhamaal 4 now sits fifth on Deshmukh’s all-time worldwide list.

Dhamaal 4 is still counting. Housefull 3, sitting fourth at 194.48 crore, is the next name it needs to pass.

Does a Box Office Crore Still Buy What It Did in 2012?

Not quite. India’s average movie ticket cost 91 rupees in 2020 and had climbed to 134 rupees by 2024, a jump driven by a tax overhaul, post pandemic price hikes and a steady shift from cheap single screens to costlier multiplexes. A film released in 2026 needs fewer paying customers than one released in 2012 to hit the same rupee figure.

The gap did not open all at once. It built in stages, and the data behind it is public.

• 47 percent is how much India’s average ticket price rose in five years, from 91 rupees in 2020 to average ticket price climbing to 134 rupees by 2024, according to audience research firm Ormax Media.
• 883 million tickets were sold at Indian cinemas in 2024, a 6 percent drop from the year before, even as the price of each ticket kept rising.
• 18 percent was the GST slab movie tickets landed in when the tax took effect in July 2017, a change that pushed multiplex ceilings in states such as Telangana up by roughly a fifth almost overnight.
• 20 percent was the minimum increase multiplex chains added to ticket and snack prices after the pandemic, on top of everything that came before it.

None of that erases what Dhamaal 4 has actually done. It just means the 2012 version of Housefull 2 and the 2026 version of Dhamaal 4 were never climbing the same ladder in the same currency.

Dhamaal 4 Is Outrunning Its Own Franchise Record

Strip the inflation question away, and Dhamaal 4 still looks like a genuinely strong hold. Advance bookings before release were modest. Sacnilk’s pre release tracking showed Dhamaal 4 selling around 92,810 tickets on BookMyShow ahead of its opening, with national chains PVR, INOX and Cinepolis contributing 1.65 crore to the advance gross, and projected an opening day India net in the 9 to 11 crore range, well below the 16 crore opening day Total Dhamaal posted in 2019.

The film outran that modest start. By day six it had banked 89 crore net in India. By day 11 that had climbed to 134.10 crore, already 87 percent of Total Dhamaal’s entire India net lifetime of 154.23 crore. Total Dhamaal itself needed only 10 days to reach 117.77 crore net back in 2019. Dhamaal 4 has now beaten that same-stage pace despite opening slower.

Welcome To The Jungle’s Fade Opens a Door at Number Four

Welcome To The Jungle, Akshay Kumar’s return to the Welcome franchise, was supposed to be one of 2026’s bigger comedy events. It has instead become a cautionary tale. The film had reached only about 135.9 crore net in India through its 22nd day, per Koimoi’s tracking, well off the pace of a clean hit, and Pinkvilla’s box office desk called the softer finish “a bit of a disappointment for the brand value of Welcome.”

Its worldwide gross is now settling close to the 194.97 crore mark that Dhamaal 4 needs to clear to become 2026’s fourth highest grossing Bollywood release. That is the gap Dhamaal 4 is stepping into. It arrives in a year that has otherwise been strong for Indian theatrical business, the same twelve months in which Ranveer Singh’s Dhurandhar 2 broke Baahubali 2’s North America opening record.

Four Films, One Director, Across Nineteen Years

The Dhamaal series started small. The 2007 original, led by Sanjay Dutt alongside Arshad Warsi, Riteish Deshmukh and Javed Jaffrey, closed its run at 51.30 crore worldwide. Double Dhamaal added Mallika Sherawat to the same core cast in 2011 and nearly one and a half times that number, finishing at 71 crore.

Then came the jump. Total Dhamaal brought in Ajay Devgn, Anil Kapoor and Madhuri Dixit alongside the returning regulars in 2019 and roughly tripled the series’ ceiling to 228.27 crore worldwide, per Bollywood Hungama’s tracking. Director Indra Kumar helmed all three of those films, then returned seven years later for Dhamaal 4. He also directed Grand Masti, another entry on Deshmukh’s top ten list above. Of the ten highest grossing films of Deshmukh’s career, three carry Kumar’s name in the director’s chair.

Housefull 3 Falls Next, Then Total Dhamaal Awaits

Three numbers now stand between Dhamaal 4 and the top of its own franchise.

• Housefull 3’s 194.48 crore worldwide total, a gap trade estimates suggest could close within two to three days at the current pace.
• Welcome To The Jungle’s 194.97 crore, the figure Dhamaal 4 must clear to finish as 2026’s fourth highest grossing Bollywood film.
• Total Dhamaal’s 228.27 crore, the series’ own ceiling and the number that decides whether Dhamaal 4 ever becomes the biggest Dhamaal film made.

Housefull 3 is the nearest target, and at the current daily pace it should fall within the week.