Assi box office collection Day 1: Taapsee Pannu’s courtroom drama trails behind Haq and Mulk, earns Rs 1 cr

3 min readMumbaiFeb 21, 2026 09:11 AM IST

Assi box office collection Day 1: Taapsee Pannu and filmmaker Anubhav Sinha have reunited for the third time, once again exploring the courtroom drama genre with their latest release, Assi, which hit theatres this Friday. Despite the credibility of the actor-director duo and a strong ensemble cast featuring Kani Kusruti, Mohammed Zeeshan Ayyub, Revathy, Manoj Pahwa and Kumud Mishra, the film has opened to underwhelming numbers at the box office. According to industry tracker Sacnilk, Assi registered a modest opening of Rs 1 crore. The limited release appears to have impacted its performance, with the film playing across approximately 1,700 shows nationwide.

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On its opening day, the film recorded an overall occupancy of 7.38%. The morning shows began on a dull note at just 3.88%. While there was some improvement in the afternoon with 7.24%, the momentum did not sustain strongly. The evening shows recorded 6.92%, before a slight push in the night shows lifted occupancy to 11.48%. Region-wise, Delhi-NCR led with 426 shows but reported an occupancy of only 7.5%. Mumbai followed with 326 shows and posted a similar figure of 7.75%.

When compared to the previous collaborations between Anubhav Sinha and Taapsee Pannu, the opening appears even more disappointing. Their last release together, Thappad, opened at Rs 3.07 crore, while their first collaboration, Mulk, also a courtroom drama, debuted at Rs 1.68 crore. Looking at Taapsee Pannu’s recent theatrical releases, the contrast indeed becomes sharper. Her last release, Khel Khel Mein, a multi-starrer comedy led by Akshay Kumar, opened at Rs 5.05 crore. Meanwhile, Dunki, headlined by Shah Rukh Khan, registered a massive opening of Rs 29.2 crore. However, Assi has performed better than some of Taapsee’s smaller solo releases, say such as Dobaaraa, which had opened at just Rs 70 lakh, while Shabaash Mithu collected Rs 50 lakh on its first day.

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The film has also trailed behind recent courtroom dramas, say, like Haq, led by Yami Gautam, which opened at Rs 1.75 crore, and while Akshay Kumar and Arshad Warsi’s Jolly LLB 3 performed significantly better with a double-digit opening of Rs 12.5 crore. In fact, the opening is lower than Taapsee’s own seminal courtroom drama Pink, which released nearly a decade ago and had collected Rs 4.32 crore on its first day. That said, for Anubhav Sinha, the opening is still an improvement over his last theatrical release Bheed, which had garnered only Rs 50 lakh on Day 1.

Assi is also facing competition from last week’s release O’Romeo, which has entered its second week and is inching towards the Rs 50 crore mark. The silver lining, however, lies in the film’s positive critical reception. If strong word-of-mouth builds over the weekend, the film could very well witness growth in the coming days.

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