L2: Empuraan becomes 3rd highest-grossing Malayalam film

Mohanlal and Prithviraj Sukumaran's much-anticipated sequel,

L2: Empuraan

, has achieved a major milestone at the Indian box office. With a domestic net collection of Rs 88.26 crore in its 8 day extended weekend has emerged as the third highest-grossing Malayalam film in India, surpassing recent blockbusters Fahadh Faasil’s

Aavesham

(Rs 85.15 crore) and Prithviraj’s

The Goat Life

(Rs 85 crore).

Serving as the direct sequel to Lucifer, L2: Empuraan reunites the powerhouse duo of actor Mohanlal and director-actor Prithviraj Sukumaran. The film opened with an impressive Rs 21 crore on Day 1, driven largely by massive collections in Kerala (Rs 18.6 crore from Malayalam version alone). Despite the expected drop on Day 2 (Rs 11.1 crore), the film showed resilience over the weekend, with Saturday and Sunday bringing in Rs 13.25 crore and Rs 13.65 crore respectively.

The weekday trend has been steady, with the film crossing ₹88 crore in its first week. Even as the collections tapered mid-week, the film held strong in its core Malayalam market. The dubbed versions in Telugu, Tamil, Hindi, and Kannada contributed marginally, but the lion’s share came from the Malayalam version.
With this performance, Empuraan now trails only Tovino Thomas’s 2018 (Rs 92.5 crore) and the industry-shattering

Manjummel Boys

directed by Chidambaram S. Poduva (Rs 141.61 crore) in the all-time highest-grossing Malayalam films within India. For context, 2018, a survival drama based on Kerala floods, had a powerful emotional connect with audiences, while Manjummel Boys was an adventure-thriller about a group of group of boys where one of them falls into the depths of Guna Caves, sparking a harrowing battle for survival that tests their unity .
Empuraan is also setting the stage for a bigger cinematic universe, with fans eagerly anticipating how the saga will continue with the third installment. Mohanlal’s son Pranav has been roped in to play a younger version of Stephen Nedumpally in the third part .
With more days to go and positive word-of-mouth continuing, the film might inch closer to 2018's record in the coming days, even if Manjummel Boys' staggering numbers remain untouched—for now.