India, July 11 -- Rajkummar Rao is going all massy with his new film, Maalik, which released in theatres this weekend. The film, directed by Pulkit, sees the actor as a ruthless gangster, in quite a break from his usual small-town boy image. Given the genre and the scale, the film was expected to make a strong opening, but that does not seem to be the case, judging by early trends.

The makers of Maalik opened advance bookings for the film on Wednesday afternoon, a day and a half before the release. But by Thursday evening, the film was crawling at the ticket window. It sold only 6,500 tickets in the three national cinema chains-PVR, Inox, and Cinepolis. This is a rather low figure. Even with some increase in sales overnight, the advance ...