August 3, 2025: Over 10 days ahead of its global release, the advance booking for YRF’s highly anticipated spy thriller, War 2, has shown a mixed trend in the overseas market, particularly in the US. While the film made history by becoming the fastest Indian movie to cross $100K in North American pre-sales, a closer look at the numbers reveals a stark contrast between its different language versions.
According to trade sources, the Hindi version of the film is lagging significantly behind. Major ticketing platforms in the US show that many big theaters scheduled to screen the Hindi version for Wednesday premieres have not sold a single ticket. This trend is attributed to the absence of a paid preview culture in Hindi cinema, which is more common in Southern film industries.
In contrast, the Telugu version, leveraging the star power of Jr NTR, has shown better momentum. The collections for the Telugu premiere shows have reportedly crossed $100K. However, even this performance is noted by trade experts to be lower than initial expectations, with the film needing to cross the $1 million mark in Telugu pre-sales alone to justify its scale of release in the US.
Directed by Ayan Mukerji, War 2 is a sequel to the 2019 blockbuster War. The film, which is part of the YRF Spy Universe, stars Hrithik Roshan and Kiara Advani alongside Jr NTR and is set for a worldwide release on August 14 for the Independence Day weekend.