Hai Jawani Toh Ishq Hona Hai, directed by David Dhawan and starring Varun Dhawan, Mrunal Thakur and Pooja Hegde, crossed 55 crore worldwide in its first week after opening on June 5, 2026. The film collected approximately 36.85 crore net in India across seven days, with a day-one opening of 7.50 crore that made it the highest-opening romantic film in Bollywood this year. The worldwide figure, combining domestic gross and overseas earnings, placed it among the top five Hindi openings of 2026.
The film follows Jaswinder, known as Jas, a wedding photographer played by Varun Dhawan who falls for Baani, played by Mrunal Thakur, while working on her sister’s wedding. They marry, but five years later Baani files for divorce because Jas wants children and she does not. While the divorce is pending, Jas meets Preet, played by Pooja Hegde, in London. The comedy escalates when both women discover they are pregnant and arrive to share the news on the same day, forcing Jas into a situation that the film plays for maximum farce.
David Dhawan directed the film from a screenplay by Yunus Sajawal with dialogue by Farhad Samji. The supporting cast includes Maniesh Paul, Chunky Panday, Jimmy Sheirgill and Mouni Roy, an ensemble drawn from Bollywood’s reliable stable of comic performers. David Dhawan has directed more than 45 Hindi films across a career that began in 1992 with Deewana, and his brand of broad comedy, built on mistaken identities, romantic complications and physical gags, has a box office track record that spans three decades. His collaborations with Govinda in the 1990s produced some of Hindi cinema’s most commercially successful comedies, and his later films with son Varun Dhawan, including Main Tera Hero (2014) and Judwaa 2 (2017), continued that commercial lineage.
The box office trajectory followed a pattern familiar to mid-range Bollywood comedies. After the 7.50 crore opening day, the film held steady on Saturday with another 7.50 crore before climbing to 9 crore on Sunday for a weekend total of 24 crore. The weekday decline was sharp, dropping to 3.50 crore on Monday, 3.85 crore on Tuesday, 2.90 crore on Wednesday and 2.60 crore on Thursday. The week-one total of 36.85 crore net represents a functional performance for a film of its budget, though it trails the pace that would be needed to reach the 75-100 crore range that separates a hit from a respectable earner in the current market.
For Varun Dhawan, the film marks a commercial improvement over his previous theatrical release, Baby John, which collected 32.65 crore in its opening week. His career since the early successes of Humpty Sharma Ki Dulhania (2014) and Badlapur (2015) has oscillated between commercial hits and underperformers, and Hai Jawani Toh Ishq Hona Hai falls in the middle ground: a film that opened well enough to justify its release but faces a second-week challenge that will determine whether it crosses the profitability threshold. The film’s performance also signals that Varun Dhawan’s audience still responds to him in the romantic comedy space, even as the broader Bollywood market has shifted toward action spectacles and franchise-driven releases like Dhamaal 4.
Critical reception has been mixed. Scroll.in described the film as “a dated comedy about one man with two pregnant partners,” noting that the screenplay rushes past its own setups. Other reviewers acknowledged Varun Dhawan’s energy and screen presence while questioning whether the material gave him enough to work with. The comedy relies on situational embarrassment and the escalating absurdity of Jas’s predicament, a formula that David Dhawan has refined across decades but that some critics felt had not been updated sufficiently for a 2026 audience.
Mrunal Thakur and Pooja Hegde occupy the two poles of the romantic triangle, with Thakur playing the career-focused wife whose decision not to have children is treated as the inciting conflict, and Hegde playing the free-spirited new love interest. Both actors have parallel careers in South Indian cinema: Thakur starred in the Telugu hit Sita Ramam (2022), while Hegde has been a leading presence in Telugu and Tamil films alongside her Hindi work. Their casting reflects the increasing fluidity between Bollywood and South Indian film industries, a dynamic that has accelerated since the pan-India success of films like RRR and Pushpa.
The film released into a competitive market dominated by Ram Charan’s Peddi, which opened the same week and quickly surged past 200 crore domestically. Hai Jawani Toh Ishq Hona Hai occupied a different audience segment, targeting the urban multiplex demographic that responds to romantic comedies, while Peddi commanded the mass single-screen audience. The coexistence of both films at the box office illustrates the segmentation that now defines Indian theatrical exhibition: Hindi comedies and South Indian action films competing for screens but drawing from largely distinct audience pools.
The worldwide total of 55 crore after one week includes overseas collections from markets where Varun Dhawan maintains a following, particularly the UK, North America and the Gulf region. The overseas performance, while modest compared to the numbers that Bollywood’s A-list action stars command internationally, is consistent with the genre: romantic comedies rarely travel as well as action spectacles, and the film’s London and Glasgow locations may have added some appeal in the UK market specifically.
Hai Jawani Toh Ishq Hona Hai is now in its second week in theaters. Its opening week numbers represent the fifth-highest opening of 2026 in Bollywood and the strongest first week for a romantic comedy this year, surpassing Pati Patni Aur Woh Do by a significant margin. Whether the film reaches the 60-70 crore domestic range that would make it a clean hit depends on its hold in week two, and on whether the arrival of new releases, including films riding anniversary momentum and fresh competition, accelerates its decline or allows it room to sustain.
