Mimoh Chakraborty's 'Haunted 3D' clears the Rs 5 crore mark in two days — a quiet signal about Bollywood's horror economics

On its second day in Indian theatres, Haunted 3D: Echoes of the Past — a Bengali-language horror film starring Mahakshay Chakraborty, the actor known professionally as Mimoh and eldest son of veteran star Mithun Chakraborty — had collected just over Rs 5 crore at the domestic box office, according to box-office tallies reported by The Indian Express on 14 June 2026. The figure is small in absolute terms: a single Bollywood tentpole will routinely open to ten times that in a single day. But read in context, the number is doing more interesting work.

The release is less a cultural event than a market test. Haunted 3D is a regional-language horror film trying to find a footing in a Hindi-dominated theatrical ecosystem, fronted by a returning actor whose last lead role dates back more than a decade. The Rs 5 crore mark on Day 2 is not a triumph. It is, however, the kind of cumulative figure that lets a small production recover its costs, argues for a longer theatrical tail, and quietly demonstrates that the Hindi horror lane is not a closed shop for the major studios that have come to dominate it.

The two-day picture

The Indian Express tally, published the morning of 14 June 2026, puts the film's two-day domestic cume at slightly above Rs 5 crore. The film is a sequel-of-sorts to a 2011 Bengali-language horror release of the same name, and the production is a smaller Bengali studio venture rather than a flagship from one of the major Mumbai-based production houses. The 3D presentation is the marketing hook; the brand recognition around the earlier Haunted 3D is the asset being leveraged.

For a film of this scale, the two-day number is the only number that matters, because the first 48 hours determine whether exhibitors keep screens on, add shows, or quietly let the release bleed out against newer Friday competition. By that test, the Mimoh-starrer has done enough to remain in the conversation into its first weekend.

What the counter-narrative looks like

The wire line on any small-to-mid Bollywood release tends to be unflattering. A Rs 5 crore two-day cume against the cost of acquiring screens, the 3D-format surcharge, and a national distribution footprint invites easy comparison with the much larger Hindi films opening the same week. The framing writes itself: another struggling release, another comeback that did not quite come back.

That framing is not wrong, exactly, but it is incomplete. Bengali horror — anchored by the Bhool Bhulaiyaa franchise's Hindi spin-offs and by the long tail of the Prosenjit-Chatterjee-era Tollywood experiments — has for several years punched above its weight in genre. A low-budget film clearing Rs 5 crore in two days without a major studio marketing machine is a different data point than a heavily subsidised tentpole doing the same. The denominator, not just the numerator, is what carries the story.

There is also the actor question. Mimoh Chakraborty has been away from lead roles long enough that the marketing around this release leans on his father's name as much as his own. The Indian Express coverage treats the release as a comeback test. Box-office data will, over the next ten days, indicate whether the family-name pull can sustain a theatrical run in a market that has grown steadily more indifferent to star children who do not deliver numbers.

The structural frame — what the horror lane actually is

Hindi horror has, over the last decade, become one of the most reliable mid-budget vehicles in Indian theatrical exhibition. The economics are unusual: a well-marketed horror release with even modest production values can over-index in the first three days, and the genre carries well to the OTT windows that now subsidise most non-tentpole Hindi films. The rise of regional horror — Bengali, Malayalam, Marathi — has fed into that pipeline.

A Bengali-language 3D release clearing Rs 5 crore on Day 2 fits this pattern. It does not fit the tentpole-comparison frame, because the tentpole comparison is the wrong one. The relevant peer group is other low-to-mid-budget genre films trying to extend runs into the second and third weekends, and on that peer-group basis the early numbers are workable, not catastrophic.

The other structural point is the language one. Indian theatrical exhibition has, since 2022, become more accommodating of non-Hindi lead releases — Tollywood, Kollywood, Sandalwood and the Malayalam industry have all pushed originals into Hindi-subtitled national runs. A Bengali-language 3D horror release playing across the country is, in that sense, a small marker of how far that accommodation has come.

What is still uncertain

The Indian Express's two-day cume is a single data point, and box-office reporting in India is famously patchy — official distributor figures, multiplex chain data, and trade-paper estimates often diverge. The figure above Rs 5 crore should be read as a credible trade-paper number, not as an audited certification. The Day 3 and Day 4 numbers — which will appear in Indian trade papers over the next 48 hours — will determine whether the film holds, drops sharply, or extends. The available source material does not specify the production budget, the print-and-advertising spend, or the screen count, all of which would change the read on whether Rs 5 crore is a floor or a ceiling.

What the report does establish is that a small Bengali horror release, fronted by an actor whose last leading turn predates most of his current audience's interest in cinema, is still in the market on Day 3, and is being covered as a release worth tracking. That, in the current Indian box-office environment, is a non-trivial outcome.

Desk note: The Indian Express trade desk treats the figure as a working tally rather than a final certification. This piece reads the Rs 5 crore cume as a structural data point on the mid-budget horror lane, rather than as either a vindication or a verdict on the film or its lead actor. Where wire framing leans on the comeback narrative, Monexus has framed the release against its relevant peer group — other low-to-mid-budget genre films in the post-pandemic theatrical landscape.