Yes, you read right. The much-awaited Mohanlal movie 'Odiyan' has entered the Rs 100-Crore club and has earned this rare achievement even before its release. The movie, which will hit screens on December 14, has already done a pre-release business of Rs 100 crore three days prior to its theatrical release.

The hype and booking

VA Shrikumar Menon, the director of the movie, took to Twitter to share the news. He revealed that the Rs 100-crore figure has been obtained combining the rights and the pre-booking sale.

Happy to share the news that Odiyan has crossed 100 cr business mark yesterday evening 3 days b4 releaSe. This is the rights and prebooking sale combined figure. 3rd film in south and 11th in Indian cinema history #odiyanrisng ⁦@Mohanlal⁩ ⁦@themanjuwarrier⁩ pic.twitter.com/TJEf8mcrl7 — shrikumar menon (@VA_Shrikumar) December 11, 2018

The advance booking for 'Odiyan' was opened on last Friday and since then reservations had started. Going by the advance booking, the release day tickets have been sold out for most shows across the state. 'Odiyan' is all set to have early morning shows from 4:30 in some centres and the tickets for those shows have been sold out.

The movie which also stars Manju Warrier, Prakash Raj, Sana Althaf is gearing up for a record release in the UAE/GCC regions too.

The elite club

It is for the first time in the history of Malayalam cinema that a film is going on to do a business of above Rs 100 cr even before its release. Earlier, 'Kayamkulam Kochunni' had done a pre-release business of above Rs 20 cr.

'Pulimurugan', released in 2016, was the first Malayalam movie to be in the club. This was followed by 2018 movie 'Kayamkulam Kochunni'. And with 'Odiyan' setting this achievement, it would be indeed a proud achievement worth celebrating for the team as well as the entire Malayalam film industry.