Riteish Deshmukh's "Raja Shivaji" has, by far, achieved four major historic milestones. After officially becoming the highest-grossing Marathi film of all time globally, it has become the first Marathi film in history to cross the 100 crore net milestone in India.
1. It passed the long-standing global lifetime record of former number 1 grosser "Sairat" (Rs 110 crore gross) in its third week.
2. It became the first-ever Marathi language film to breach Rs 100 crore net in India, after it crossed Rs 101.40 crore net on Day 24.
3. It became the biggest Marathi-language opener, shattering the regional opening day records by debuting with Rs 11.35 crore to Rs 12.40 crore net on Maharashtra Day.
4. It also became the fastest Marathi film to reach the Rs 50 crore domestic net milestone, hitting it in just one week.
It must be said that the hyper-targeted regional performance of Riteish's film, which he also directed, is outperforming standard Bollywood trajectories. Bollywood operates on significantly higher production budgets (typically Rs 150 – 350 crore) and a wide nationwide multi-language reach.
Comparatively, "Raja Shivaji", with a Rs 101.40 crore domestic net primarily driven by single-state earnings (from Maharashtra), and localised theatre occupancy (averaging nearly 76% in early weeks), matches or beats the density of big-ticket Hindi releases.
Also, many mainstream Bollywood releases struggle to recover their massive Rs 200+ crore (and above) budgets. "Raja Shivaji", on the other hand, recovered its reported Rs 75 crore budget within 10 days and is currently logging pure profit for the producers.
Released simultaneously in Hindi and Marathi, the film functioned as a mid-tier Bollywood project itself. The Hindi version alone generated over Rs 6.40 crore net within its first two days, demonstrating competitive crossover appeal in the Hindi belt.
However, it was the Marathi original version that generated the highest revenue, bringing in approximately Rs 68 to 70 crore net out of the film's total domestic net collections.
