Manjummel Boys becomes highest-grossing Malayalam movie ever, crosses Rs 180 crore worldwide

At one point in the Malayalam film Manjummel Boys, Kuttan (Soubin Shahir) says, “How can I possibly come back after reaching here?”

Soubin Shahir, who is both the producer of the film and acts in it (the eldest and, thus, the leader of the pack of men in the film), will have to echo the sentiment in real life, too, for his low-budget Malayalam thriller, Manjummel Boys, has shattered records, grossing Rs 180 crore (the highest for any Malayalam movie) at the box office, backed by nothing but good word of mouth and the power of social media.

Earlier in March, Manjummel Boys joined the elusive Rs 100 crore club in Malayalam cinema. Only the fourth Malayalam film to achieve this enviable feat, purely counting the theatre collections alone. It is also the fastest Malayalam film to achieve this feat. What is impressive is that from Tamil Nadu only the film garnered Rs 15 crore, that too within 11 days of its release.

Directed by Chidambaram (known for the Basil Joseph-starrer Jan.E.Man, 2021), Manjummel Boys  made history by becoming the highest-earning Malayalam film ever. It surpassed the previous record set by the Tovino Thomas-starrer movie 2018, directed by Jude Anthany Joseph and was India's official entry for Oscars 2024 consideration, last year.

The Manjummel Boys team expressed their joy on Instagram with a post saying, “Thank you all for the love,” celebrating their achievement as the highest-grossing Malayalam film.

The film has grossed around Rs 62 crore in overseas markets. When combined with its impressive domestic total of around Rs 120 crore, Manjummel Boys has reached an astonishing worldwide gross collection of over Rs 180 crore.

During its third weekend, the movie’s popularity continued to rise steadily. Ticket sales increased from Rs 5.5 crore on the third Friday to a strong Rs 8.9 crore by Sunday, demonstrating the enduring appeal of the movie. This momentum carried over into the weekdays, with consistent collections averaging a healthy Rs 2.5 crore daily.

Although Manjummel Boys was well-received in Kerala, it achieved massive success in Tamil Nadu, with many theatres still running houseful shows. The film surpassed the once-highest-grossing movie Pulimurugan (2016) in gross collections during its initial release days.

According to the Moneycontrol review of the film, which released on February 22, revolves around a real-life incident and a boisterous bunch hailing from different socio-economic backgrounds from Ernakulam in Kerala. They gatecrash into weddings, pick up a brawl over nothing, plan impromptu road trips, and believe in living life to the hilt. Most trips are spontaneous and conducted on a shoestring budget with a lot of booze and fun thrown in. That’s how they planned a Kodaikanal (Guna Caves) road trip as well. But the trip turned out to be nothing as they expected, as the narrative suddenly drifts into an edge-of-the-seat survival thriller. Besides Soubin Shahir, Sreenath Bhasi, Ganapathi, Balu Varghese and Jean Paul Lal, among others, play prominent roles in the movie, aided by much-lauded cinematography and screenplay and Sushin Shyam’s non-intrusive yet folksy tunes.

But, more importantly, the movie has revived the fandom for the 1991 Tamil cult classic film, the Kamal Haasan-starrer Guna, which inspired director Chidambaram S Poduvalto make Manjummel Boys, peppered with Easter eggs as a tribute to Guna, which explored questions like ‘who’s normal in society and who’s not’, and its hero Kamal Haasan.

“It's unbelievable, the growth of the movie and reception received by the movie,” Chidambaram said in a recent interview.

Almost a month since its release, Manjummel Boys has broken box office records for Malayalam movies in other states like Karnataka and Tamil Nadu and the fandom seems to be spreading further. “Simply extraordinary piece of confident mainstream filmmaking. So much better than all the big budget filmmaking in India,” said renowned director and producer Anurag Kashyap, who also admitted to being “insanely jealous” of Malayalam cinema.

When will Manjummel Boys release on OTT? Negotiations are still underway and the producer wants as much as Rs 20 crore in return for the OTT rights, according to a Times of India report citing trade analyst Sreedhar Pillai. Other speculators say that the OTT release may have to wait until the movie is released in Telugu and Hindi.