Prahaar vs Nayyi Navelli Day 1 Box Office: Yami Gautam’s Horror-Comedy Opens Ahead of Rajkummar Rao’s Courtroom Drama

The two big Hindi releases of October 16 have locked horns at the ticket counters, and Yami Gautam’s Nayyi Navelli has drawn first blood in the opening-day box-office battle against Rajkummar Rao’s Prahaar, according to trade estimates.

Nayyi Navelli collected ₹3.25 crore nett in India on Friday, with an India gross of ₹3.83 crore and overseas collections of ₹75 lakh, taking its worldwide gross to ₹4.58 crore. According to a PTI report, the film’s makers claimed an opening-day worldwide figure of ₹4.6 crore. Early day-2 numbers show the film growing about 23% on Saturday, with its worldwide gross reaching ₹10.13 crore.

Prahaar: The Ujjwal Nikam Story opened lower at ₹2.35 crore nett in India (₹2.77 crore India gross), with overseas markets adding ₹75 lakh for a worldwide total of ₹3.52 crore. The courtroom drama recorded just 13% overall occupancy across 4,133 shows, with night shows leading at 25.85%.

Prahaar, directed by Avinash Arun, casts Rajkummar Rao as celebrated public prosecutor Ujjwal Nikam, and revisits landmark criminal cases including the 1993 Mumbai blasts and the 26/11 attacks. Wamiqa Gabbi, Jaideep Ahlawat, Lalit Prabhakar and Sikandar Kher co-star. Critics were kind to it — Bollywood Bubble gave the film 4 stars, calling it a hard-hitting, well-written courtroom drama with nuanced performances.

Nayyi Navelli, directed by Balaji Mohan in his Bollywood directorial debut and produced by Aanand L Rai and Himanshu Sharma, is a horror-comedy set in Meerut. Yami Gautam plays Mohini, a picture-perfect bride whose arrival transforms a chaotic household — until her brother-in-law begins to suspect she may be a daayan, a witch figure from Indian folklore. The critic response has been mixed: Pinkvilla rated it 2/5, IndiaForums gave it 1.5/5, while Taran Adarsh awarded it 3/5 and praised its Ramayan-inspired mythological portions.

Both films arrived with the Dussehra weekend as their biggest advantage. Trade expectations peg Prahaar’s opening weekend around ₹8–9 crore nett and Nayyi Navelli’s at ₹10–12 crore nett. Neither release has posted a strong opening-day statement, so the weekend trend and audience word of mouth will decide which film survives the festive window. All figures are trade estimates and may differ from official studio numbers.

Source: Bollywood Bubble; Movie Talkies; Sacnilk via The Daily Jagran; Pinkvilla; PTI via Filmibeat.