‘War 2’ is one of the most anticipated movies of the year. The Hrithik Roshan, Jr NTR, Kiara Advani film is also facing a tough competition from Rajikinanth’s ‘Coolie’ which is already having a huge advance booking. While earlier, the advance sales for ‘War 2’ were not extra-ordinary, the film has picked momentum just as the openings in Telugu markets have opened. Ahead of the opening of bookings in the Telugu states, ‘War 2’ had already grossed around ₹10 crore (with block seats) for its Hindi version’s first day. However, once sales began in the Telugu markets, momentum picked up sharply, with BookMyShow logging over 20,000 tickets sold per hour for the first time.This boost is expected to spill over into the Hindi belt as well just as the film releases. At present, Coolie is leading the advance booking race, having already hit an opening-day worldwide gross of ₹75 crore, of which ₹30 crore of which comes from India and this data was till Wednesday afternoon. According to Sacnilk, the film has made Rs 16 crore so far on Day 1 as the gross number and this is the figure from advance sales excluding the block bookings. However, with the block bookings, the advance day 1 number is Rs 28 crore as of now. However, according to Box Office India, Trade analysts caution, that these numbers don’t yet point to an “huge blockbuster type of weekend”, the kind the industry hopes for with such big-budget spectacles. ‘War 2’ may look underwhelming when compared to some past juggernauts, but the ratio of advance sales to first-day collections has changed in recent years, making direct parallels tricky. Some previous “big ones,” as the trade hints, even had “advances which were tampered putting it in a nice way.” By contrast, War 2’s advance numbers are twice that of recent big titles like ‘Raid 2’ and ‘Housefull 5’. Regional performance of the film will also be a mixed bag. ‘War 2’ is expected to underperform in Maharashtra, Gujarat, East Punjab, Rajasthan, and Madhya Pradesh, just as Pathaan, Jawan, and Animal did, but it will need to make up for this shortfall in other territories, as those films managed to do.The Telugu-dubbed version could perform well thanks to JR NTR’s presence, who is a massive star in the Nizam/Andhra belt. One already senses that as the fil has suddenly picked momentum, just as the Telugu markets have opened. Still, ‘Coolie’ will be a formidable rival, even outside its home Tamil market. Eventually, the content of both these movies and word of mouth will eventually decide the fate of both these movies while the weekend performance will be crucial for deciding among these.