Mohanlal and Prithviraj’s L2: Empuraan sees over 80% drop in Week 2 | Malayalam Movie News
Mohanlal and Prithviraj Sukumaran’s much-awaited Malayalam action-thriller L2: Empuraan has achieved a significant milestone by entering the prestigious Rs 100 crore club in India. The film, a sequel to Lucifer, is only the second Malayalam film after Manjummel Boys to breach the Rs 100 crore India net mark. However, despite the feat, L2: Empuraan witnessed a sharp decline in its second-week collections.
After a strong opening week with Rs 88.25 crore in the domestic market, the film’s collections dipped by over 80% in the second week, managing to earn only Rs 14.8 crore. This significant drop highlights the film’s diminishing hold at the box office post its initial buzz. The film also got entangled in a political controversy leading the makers making voluntary cuts to the film and also lead actor Mohanlal issuing an apology.
Breakdown of the second week shows that Empuraan collected Rs 2.9 crore on its second Friday, which marginally improved over the weekend but dropped steeply from Monday onwards. By Day 15, early estimates suggest the film had settled at Rs 103.05 crore net in India.
Despite the domestic slowdown, L2: Empuraan continues to be a massive global success. It has now become the highest-grossing Malayalam film worldwide, raking in over Rs 250 crore gross across all territories. This puts it ahead of Manjummel Boys, which held the record earlier this year.
Directed by Prithviraj Sukumaran and headlined by superstar Mohanlal, L2: Empuraan builds upon the political and criminal underworld saga introduced in Lucifer. The film was released in five languages—Malayalam, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, and Hindi—but the lion’s share of its earnings came from the Malayalam version.
While the steep drop in the second week might concern some, the overall box office journey of Empuraan is nothing short of historic for Malayalam cinema. The work on the third installment has already begun with Prithviraj roping in Mohanlal’s son Pranav to play the younger version of Stephen Nedampally . The film has for now been titled as L3: The Beginning.
