MUMBAI: With Gandhi Jayanti and Dussehra coinciding on October 2 this year, families made the most of the holiday by heading to cinema halls, choosing between Rishab Shetty’s ‘Kantara: Chapter 1’ and Varun Dhawan’s ‘Sunny Sanskari Ki Tulsi Kumari’ for their festive movie outing.

Both movies managed to boost the footfall and, of course, the box office collections. The makers of ‘Kantara: Chapter 1’ claimed that around 1.28 million tickets were sold on the release day.

“The roar of #KantaraChapter1 echoes across the nation With 1.28 MILLION+ tickets sold in 24 hours! The divine spectacle records the Highest Day 1 sales on @bookmyshowin in 2025,” a post read on the official Instagram handle of Kantara film.

Earlier on Friday morning, Rishab Shetty expressed gratitude to the audience for giving an extraordinary response to his film.

Taking to X (formerly Twitter), he wrote, “From struggling to get one evening show in 2016 to 5000+ houseful shows in 2025. This journey is nothing but your love, support, and God’s grace. Forever grateful to every single person who made this possible. #KantaraChapter1.”

In another post, he urged the audience not to record videos from the film and then share them online.

“Dear #Kantara Family and Cinema Lovers, #KantaraChapter1 is as much yours as ours, and your love has made it truly unforgettable. We humbly request you not to share/record videos from the film and not to encourage piracy. Let’s keep the magic of Kantara alive in theatres, so everyone can feel it the way it was meant to be. Experience #BlockbusterKantara only in cinemas,” Rishab posted.

Written and directed by Rishab, ‘Kantara: Chapter 1’ was released on October 2, across multiple languages, including Kannada, Hindi, Telugu, Malayalam, Tamil, Bengali, and English.

The film also stars Rukmini Vasanth in a pivotal role. (ANI)