Ayushmann Khurrana's Pati Patni Aur Woh Do has UNDERWHELMED at box office, earns Rs 3.85 crore on Day 1

Ayushmann Khurrana's Pati Patni Aur Woh Do has opened to a visibly muted response at the box office, pulling in just Rs 5.62 crore worldwide on its first day in theatres. The sequel to Mudassar Aziz's own 2019 crowd-pleaser ran across 6,822 shows on Friday, May 15, clocking a national occupancy of 12%, with India nett collections settling at Rs 3.85 crore and India gross at Rs 4.62 crore, per industry tracker Sacnilk.

The numbers are a reality check for a franchise that once had legs. Pati Patni Aur Woh, the Kartik Aaryan-led original, launched at Rs 10.50 crore gross and Rs 9.10 crore nett in India, eventually piling up a Rs 109 crore lifetime. The sequel, featuring Rakul Preet Singh, Sara Ali Khan and Wamiqa Gabbi alongside Ayushmann, is running at roughly half that pace right out of the gate.

A sequel that arrives with baggage

Mudassar Aziz returns to direct the follow-up to his own hit, which is either a comforting fact or a cautionary one, depending on how you look at it. The original had the benefit of Kartik Aaryan's everyman charm, Ananya Panday's effervescence and Bhumi Pednekar's sharp comic timing. This time, the ensemble is different, the expectations recalibrated, and the reviews, well, mixed enough to keep the casual multiplex audience at arm's length on opening day.

Where the cast stands coming in

Each lead walks into this film off a very different trajectory. Ayushmann's last theatrical release was Thamma, a Diwali horror-comedy produced by Dinesh Vijan that opened explosively at Rs 24 crore across 14,298 shows. Even as collections dipped post-holiday weekend, the film still managed Rs 187.59 crore total, slotting neatly into Vijan's Stree-Bhediya-Roohi-Munjya universe. Rakul Preet Singh was fresh off De De Pyaar De 2, opposite Ajay Devgn and R Madhavan, which earned Rs 111.77 crore on an opening of Rs 8.75 crore.

Sara Ali Khan's last theatrical outing was Anurag Basu's Metro In Dino, a film stacked with talent including Pankaj Tripathi, Anupam Kher, Neena Gupta and Konkona Sen Sharma that still only opened at Rs 3.50 crore and finished at Rs 69 crore. Wamiqa Gabbi is perhaps the one arriving with the most commercial momentum: her earlier 2025 release Bhooth Bangla, the Akshay Kumar-Priyadarshan reunion, crossed Rs 249.05 crore worldwide.

The Ayushmann problem: double-digit openings are the baseline

Part of why Friday's numbers sting is context. Ayushmann Khurrana has built his brand on mid-budget social comedies that open reliably in double digits. That track record creates a floor, and this film has not cleared it. A 12% occupancy figure on day one, for an actor of his standing, signals that the marketing pitch did not land hard enough or the content word-of-mouth heading into release was too lukewarm to drive urgency.

Can the weekend rescue it?

The real test now is Saturday and Sunday. Films with soft Friday openings can still turn things around when the material has genuine replay value or a strong emotional hook. With a moderate budget, recovery within the first week is not impossible, but it demands a meaningful jump in occupancy over the coming days. The makers will be watching the multiplexes closely.

Our review of Pati Patni Aur Woh Do is here. A snippet from our review read, "For a film that runs at merely 2 hours and 10 minutes, Pati Patni Aur Wo Do paradoxically starts feeling rushed, with situations becoming too frantic to breathe properly. The overall emotional register of the film is also a little lacklustre, meaning you never quite feel it the way the director clearly intended.

However, and this is worth acknowledging, Mudassar Aziz and the entire team commit to the madness with enough conviction and enough energy to make the film entertaining despite its shortcomings, which is ultimately what Pati Patni Aur Wo Do manages to be."