From a film that was banned to having a release was a long way for Haraamkhor. The Nawazuddin Siddique and Shweta Tripathi starter opened to positive reviews across the board speaking volumes of the impeccable acting of all on screen and of the old subject matter the film displays bravely on screen. Haraamkhor within the first weekend itself soared high moving clearly into a profit margin, having already been produced on an extremely low budget of under 1 Crore. The film was announced for its 13th January release only 3 weeks prior to the release and had limited time for awareness and promotions and yet managed to garner enough positive reactions and response from the audience
Amongst its indie peers, the film soared high! The film took an opening of 23.7 lakhs on Day 1 and instantly saw a close to 40% growth the next day accumulating close to 35.6 lakhs and wrapped the weekend with a collection of 41.9 lakhs on Sunday. The film prior to its release through its distribution and digital rights had already earned back its money spent. The film took home a sum of 1.01 crores over its first weekend.
When compared to the film of its genre, size and budget, it's done better than most other like Aligarh which earned 26 lakhs with a release in 400 screens, Parched earned 12 lakhs in 150 screen on its opening day, Budhia Singh earned 24 lakhs with a release in 638 screens and Angry Indian Goddesses earned 25 lakhs from 280 screens.
Another interesting aspect was as opposed to most big ticket films, the film was promoted through smart and marginal market spends. Even when the trailer hit the digital world, it organically garnered over 7 million views without a penny spent on its promotions and push strategies. The film was promoted minus any template norms and had no music label backing the label barring a single by Jasleen Royal who sang the song Kidre Jaawan.
All in all, the film has already recovered its production and incurring costs prior to release and now has officially registered itself into the profitable margin.