Nayyi Navelli First Weekend Box Office: Yami Gautam’s Horror Comedy Settles Around Rs 11 Crore Nett

Yami Gautam’s horror comedy Nayyi Navelli has closed its first weekend at the box office with an estimated India nett collection of around Rs 11 crore, as trade estimates from multiple trackers show a steady but unspectacular three-day run for the October 16 release.

The film opened on Friday, October 16, with an India nett of Rs 3.25 crore, per trade tracker Sacnilk. Saturday brought growth, with estimates ranging from Rs 4.00 crore (Sacnilk) to Rs 4.25 crore (Bollywood Hungama), a jump of roughly 16 to 25 percent. Sunday’s estimates diverge more — Sacnilk reported Rs 4.40 crore nett, while Bollywood Hungama’s live day-wise tracker had the day at Rs 3.65 crore with evening shows still counting. The weekend India nett total consequently lands between Rs 10.70 crore (Bollywood Hungama) and Rs 11.65 crore (Sacnilk), with Sacnilk placing the worldwide gross at Rs 15.88 crore, including Rs 2 crore from overseas. (All figures are trade estimates.)

Encouragingly, occupancy improved each day — roughly 11 percent on Friday to 14 percent on Saturday and about 17 percent on Sunday, per Sacnilk — with Sunday drawing over two lakh footfalls across 5,500-plus shows. Delhi NCR, Mumbai, Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh led collections, with Bengaluru, Kolkata, Chennai and Hyderabad posting the strongest occupancies.

The problem is word of mouth: Bollywood Hungama reported audience response as mixed, tilted towards the negative, which makes long theatrical legs difficult. The film also arrived in a crowded corridor, competing with Rajinikanth’s Jailer 2, Ajay Devgn’s Drishyam 3 and Rajkummar Rao’s Prahaar. Notably, on October 18 Bollywood Hungama reported that some North India theatres have begun replacing Nayyi Navelli and Prahaar shows with Jailer 2’s Hindi version — a sign of how brutal the screen battle has become.

One card remains: the Dussehra holiday on Tuesday, October 20. Trade watchers believe the holiday, with the near-holiday Monday, could push collections up by a few crores. But with the production cost commonly cited in the Rs 30 to 50 crore range, the film needs far more than a festive bump to emerge a success story.

Nayyi Navelli, directed by Balaji Mohan and produced by Aanand L Rai and Himanshu Sharma, presents Yami Gautam in the horror-comedy space, with Amazon MGM Studios associated with the project. It released theatrically on October 16 with Amazon Prime Video as its OTT partner.

Source: Bollywood Hungama, Sacnilk (trade estimates)