Nani’s The Paradise has completed its first week at the Indian box office with a milestone that is significant for the actor even if the film’s momentum has cooled sharply since opening day.
According to Sacnilk figures cited by Hindustan Times, the Srikanth Odela-directed film collected approximately ₹3.25 crore net on Day 7, taking its seven-day India total to ₹104.75 crore net. Another tracker update placed Wednesday slightly higher at ₹3.40 crore and the cumulative figure at ₹104.90 crore, so the exact total varies marginally depending on when estimates were updated.
Either way, The Paradise has comfortably crossed ₹100 crore net in India — a first for a Nani-led film — but its first-week pace remains behind Prabhas’ The Raja Saab.
‘The Paradise’ trails ‘The Raja Saab’ in first-week India business
For a cleaner comparison, Sacnilk lists The Raja Saab at ₹130.25 crore net in India after seven days, compared with roughly ₹104.75-104.90 crore for The Paradise. That leaves Nani’s film around ₹25 crore behind the Prabhas-starrer at the same stage.
It is worth separating that first-week number from The Raja Saab’s eventual India total. Sacnilk currently lists the Prabhas film at ₹146.04 crore net overall, but that includes collections beyond its first seven days.
The comparison is still notable because both films followed a somewhat similar pattern: a very large initial burst followed by a visible drop once the opening excitement faded.
The Paradise began with ₹11.60 crore from paid premieres and ₹34.65 crore on its first full day, giving Nani the biggest opening of his career. It then dropped to ₹14.90 crore on Friday before stabilising over the weekend and declining again through the weekdays.
That means the film’s first-week total has been driven heavily by its opening rather than unusually strong weekday legs.
Mixed reviews have not stopped Nani from setting a career record
The most important context is that ₹104 crore is still new territory for Nani.
Hindustan Times reports that The Paradise has already surpassed the India net totals of several of his previous releases, including Dasara at ₹81.93 crore and HIT: The Third Case at ₹80.97 crore.
The film has managed that despite receiving mixed responses after release. Even Nani has acknowledged how unusual the reaction has been, saying the response felt unlike anything he had experienced across his 33-film career and describing some of the criticism as “aggressive honesty.”
That combination makes The Paradise an interesting box-office case.
It is difficult to call a film weak when it has already delivered the biggest domestic total of its star’s career within one week. At the same time, the size of its opening created expectations for a much stronger hold than the movie has actually produced.
Day 7 shows how quickly the film has slowed down
Day 7 is where that tension becomes clearest.
From a ₹34.65 crore opening day to roughly ₹3.25-3.40 crore on Wednesday, the film has lost close to 90% of its first-day daily business. That is not unusual after a front-loaded opening, particularly for a major Telugu release, but it does mean the second weekend now matters more than the ₹100 crore headline alone suggests.
The worldwide picture is stronger. Times of India reported approximately ₹154.80 crore gross worldwide after Day 7.
That already makes The Paradise one of Nani’s largest theatrical performers, but the next few days will determine how much further it can stretch that record.
The first week has essentially produced two truths at once: The Paradise is now Nani’s biggest domestic grosser, but it has not matched the first-week pace of some of 2026’s larger Telugu releases.
For Nani, crossing ₹100 crore net in India is still a genuine career milestone. For The Paradise itself, however, the more revealing number may be what it earns after that milestone — because Week 2 will show whether the film can recover from its weekday decline or whether most of its lifetime business was already built during the opening rush.
