Can Aamir Khan’s Secret Superstar still become the biggest hit of 2017?

The Bollywood film Secret Superstar has been on the big screen for about a month now and will soon complete its domestic India release with about a Rs.83 crore/$12.8 million box office total. That puts it somewhere around 20^th place among all of the Bollywood pictures released in 2017, and far, far behind the year’s number one highest-grosser, Golmaal Again.  See the Official Secret Superstar trailer.

When we include worldwide grosses, Golmaal Again’s total of nearly Rs.300 crore/$46 million looks untouchable for Secret Superstar which currently at Rs.123 crore worldwide, even though the Aamir Khan picture has a few important overseas territories in which it still has yet to release.

The important territories mentioned include China, Taiwan and Hong Kong, where Khan is hugely popular. His last picture, Dangal, earned aggregate theatrical receipts of Rs.1,315 crore ($202 million) in those three territories alone, with mainland China accounting for the vast majority of that total.  Follow Spotlife Asia for the latest Entertainment and Lifestyle news.

Given how well Secret Superstar has already performed in other overseas territories where Khan is a major box office draw, it’s reasonable to assume that the picture will play well in the Chinese-speaking countries, where his last few films—Dangal, PK, and Dhoom 3—have over-indexed.

Of course it’s unlikely that Secret Superstar will accumulate anything close to Dangal-sized grosses in these territories. But it doesn’t need to in order to surpass Golmaal Again.  A Rs.200 crore gross in China, Taiwan and Hong Kong should put Secret Superstar well past the Ajay Devgn comedy’s worldwide. That’s just 15 percent of what Dangal earned in the three countries.  Secret Superstar movie review.

Seeing that Secret Superstar has already earned 15 percent or more of Dangal’s lifetime gross in each and every major international territory where it has already rolled out, it would be surprising if it doesn’t repeat that feat in Greater China. If it does as well as it did in the UK, New Zealand, the UAE and Turkey—all places where it earned 20 percent or more of Dangal’s cume—it could wind up with Rs.300 crore or more in the Greater China region alone.