Bollywood's Bodyguard is box office mustard

The Bollywood thriller Bodyguard, which opened in the UAE last week, had the biggest opening day in the history of Indian cinema.

The film took 215 million rupees (Dh17.2m) on Wednesday and 183 million rupees on Thursday, both public holidays in India, taking the two-day total to 398 million rupees, according to figures from studio Reliance Entertainment.

Taran Adarsh, on the bollywoodhungama.com website, forecast business would "zoom upwards" and break weekend records too.

According to the boxofficeindia.com site, which tracks cinema takings, Khan's award-winning corrupt cop movie from last year, Dabangg (Fearless), held the previous record for first-day takings in India with 193.4 million rupees gross. It also holds the record for first-weekend takings of 653.4 million rupees and for the first week at 1.08 billion rupees. Aamir Khan's 2009 film Three Idiots holds the record for all takings, with 2.69 billion rupees.