By Ayesha Khan 
Chennai, October 17: The Diwali box office in Tamil Nadu is a strange battlefield. No matter how many films come out, one always walks away with the firecracker glow while another gets buried in the smoke. This year, it’s Diesel, Bison, and Dude slugging it out three movies with nothing in common except timing.
By the end of Friday’s first shows, the picture was already getting clearer. Dude raced ahead. Bison found love in all the right corners. Diesel, for all its noise, looked stranded somewhere off the coast.
Diesel: Heavy Engine, Weak Spark
You could sense Diesel wanted to be a big, earthy action drama, the kind that smells of salt water and diesel fumes. Director Shanmugam Muthusamy shot for realism, even putting Harish Kalyan and the crew through a 30-day sea schedule. But somewhere between ambition and execution, the film ran out of breath.
Critics didn’t mince words. India Today slammed the film for “weak storytelling and technical flaws,” giving it a 1.5 out of 5. India Herald, more polite, said the film “fires up the engine but runs out of fuel midway.” On social media, that line stuck fans repeated it like a punchline.
In theatres, it wasn’t much better. Morning shows opened half empty. Trade circles pegged Diesel’s Day 1 gross around ₹1.20 crore, which sounds believable enough for a medium-budget release competing against two star-backed films. A few data trackers threw out an absurd ₹2 lakh figure clearly an error. Evening shows improved a little, but not enough to lift the mood.
At Chennai’s Sathyam multiplex, a group of college students walked out shaking their heads. “Nice visuals, but the movie doesn’t move,” one said. Others online compared it to Vetri Maaran’s Vada Chennai, calling it a “wannabe gritty” attempt. You can tell people wanted to like it, they just didn’t get enough reason to.
Bison: Mari Selvaraj’s Roar Finds Its Crowd
Then came Mari Selvaraj’s Bison, a sports drama that burns slowly but leaves marks. The story delves into caste, competition, and survival, Selvaraj’s favourite themes, with Dhruv Vikram delivering what many are calling the best performance of his career so far.
By afternoon, the film’s hashtag was trending across X. Words like “gut-wrenching,” “fiery,” and “political” kept showing up. Viewers applauded Selvaraj for returning to raw, emotionally charged storytelling. “You can feel the pain in every frame,” one post read.
There were small complaints, of course, the length, the speeches, a few preachy note, but none of that drowned the praise. If early trade chatter is right, Bison pulled somewhere around ₹3–4 crore on its first day with packed houses in Madurai, Trichy, and parts of Coimbatore. Evening shows ran strong, the kind of turnout that hints at serious weekend legs.
In simple terms, Bison didn’t roar because of marketing. It roared because of emotion.
Dude: The Crowd-Pleaser Wins Round One
While the other two aimed for intensity, Pradeep Ranganathan’s Dude waltzed in with easy charm. A youth comedy with heart, it brought relief to families and college crowds alike. Advance sales told the story before the screens even lit up, roughly ₹7.5 crore in pre-bookings, according to trade trackers, and projections of ₹8–10 crore by day’s end.
Inside theatres, Dude felt alive. The first half played like a crowd-controlled carnival, laughter, applause, selfie flashes. Some viewers said the second half dragged, but most didn’t mind. As one fan joked outside a mall theatre, “It’s Diwali who’s looking for logic today?”
Critics called it “predictable but engaging.” The keyword was fun. That, it seems, was enough. Between Love Today and Dude, Pradeep Ranganathan has now cemented himself as Tamil cinema’s new poster boy for relatable humour.
A Clash That Says A Lot About Tamil Audiences
By nightfall, the scoreboard looked something like this:
Dude leading comfortably, Bison holding firm, Diesel trailing with sputters of hope.
However, Tamil audiences have a tendency to revise early verdicts. A few good shows, a burst of word-of-mouth, and suddenly a slow starter turns into a surprise success. That’s what Bison seems poised for. As for Diesel, its only real chance now lies in smaller coastal towns that might connect with its fishing-community backdrop more than city multiplexes did.
What’s fascinating about this Diwali clash is how clearly it divides audience moods. Dude feeds the festive crowd. Bison speaks to conscience and emotion. Diesel tries to straddle both and ends up caught in between. It’s not a failure of effort, just a mismatch of intent and timing, the kind of thing that happens when a film releases into too much noise.
Still, that’s the beauty of a Tamil festival weekend. It isn’t just commerce; it’s chaos, loyalty, and gut feeling. By Monday, numbers will settle. But for now, the story’s simple:
One film made people cheer.
One made them think.
And one, sadly, left them waiting for something that never quite came.
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- Ayesha Khanhttps://hindustanherald.in/author/ayesha/
- Ayesha Khanhttps://hindustanherald.in/author/ayesha/
- Ayesha Khanhttps://hindustanherald.in/author/ayesha/
- Ayesha Khanhttps://hindustanherald.in/author/ayesha/
