The romantic pairing of Tiger Shroff  and Shraddha Kapoor in director Sabbir Khan’s Baaghi proved irresistible to cinemagoers in India last weekend. The romantic action drama produced by Sajid Nadiadwala rang up an estimated 23.07 crore ($3.46 million) in its first two days on 2,750 screens in India, pointing to a 3-day take of at least 36 crore ($5.4 million). That would rank as the third biggest opening weekend for a Hindi release this year , trailing Fan, Maneesh Sharma’s thriller starring Shah Rukh Khan, and Airlift, Raja Menon’s true-life drama starring Akshay Kumar. “The fact that this Tiger Shroff film is comparing with the likes of Shah Rukh Khan and Akshay Kumar starrers says a lot about the kind of acceptance it has managed to find amongst the audience. Released by UTV Motion Pictures, Baaghi is on course to take more in its first weekend than Heropanti, Shroff’s debut film from the same director and producer, earned in its first week in 2014.

Written by Sanjeev Dutta and inspired by Indonesian hit  The Raid: Redemption and Telugu film Varsham, the film collected an estimated $493,000 in two days in the Gulf states, a fair $240,000 on 79 screens in the U.S., $161,000 in Pakistan, $87,000 on 34 in the U.K. and $A72,000 ($55,000) on just 13 in Australia. Shroff plays a wild, untamed boy named Ronny who is sent by his father to a Kalaripayattu guru to be trained in martial arts. En route on the train to the Kalari school Ronny meets Siya (Shraddha Kapoor), with whom he falls instantly in love with while she is singing and dancing in the rain. Unknown to the two, Bangkok-based gangster Raaghav (Sudheer Babu), who is the Kalari guru’s son, also falls for her, setting up a major confrontation. Making up for Shroff’s inexperience, Shraddha Kapoor is an established lead actress with two 100 crore ($15 million) films to her credit: Ek Villain and ABCD 2. Well-informed blogger and critic Taran Adarsh estimates the production budget at 35 crore ($5.26 million) and the P&A spend in India at 12 crore ($1.8 million). He believes the producers have already recouped 20 crore ($3 million) from selling the satellite rights and 5 crore ($750,000) for the music rights, so they need just 22 crore ($3.3 million) to recoup.