Middle East

Eid 2026 Box Office: Lebaran In Indonesia; 'Dhurandhar 2' & War Impact In Gulf

Liz Shackleton

26 Mar 2026 — 9 min read

Danur: The Last Chapter

The Eid al-Fitr holiday, which marks the end of the Muslim world’s Ramadan month of fasting, is a peak box office season in many territories around the world. This year, the holiday is coinciding with the US-Iran conflict, an issue for the Gulf territories which have been under retaliatory missile and drone attack, and against the backdrop of a rising tide of propaganda and censorship, related to much older conflicts, in South Asia. Meanwhile, Indonesia, which has the world’s largest Muslim population, is relatively unaffected by these troubles and has been packing cinemas over the Eid holidays with a combination of horror films, kids and family dramas and Hollywood animation. Streamlined decided to take a closer look...

'Danur: The Last Chapter' Heads Indonesia’s Lebaran Box Office

Six films were released over Indonesia’s Eid al-Fitr holiday, known locally as Lebaran, among which MD Entertainment’s Danur: The Last Chapter, the final installment in a popular horror franchise, came out top with more than 1.6 million admissions between March 18-25, according to figures from Bicara Box Office and Cinepoint.

In second place is Rapi Films’ family comedy drama Tunggu Aku Sukses Nanti, which had drawn more than 1 million admissions as of March 25, followed by Soraya Intercine Films’ horror film Suzanna Witchcraft, starring Luna Maya and Reza Rahadian, with 661,000 admissions.

Visinema’s live-action kids film Na Willa is currently ranking fourth with 423,000 admissions, followed by another family comedy drama, StarVision’s Senin Harga Naik, with 373,000 admissions, and Rainbow On Mars (Pelangi Di Mars), a sci-fi live-action/CG hybrid produced by Mahakarya Pictures, MBK and Guava Film, with around 174,000 tickets sold. Other films on release in Indonesia over the holidays include Disney animation Hoppers (ranking sixth in daily admissions terms yesterday), concert film Bring Me The Horizon: L.I.V.E. In São Paulo and Indian action thriller Dhurandhar: The Revenge.

Unlike last year’s Lebaran, when Visinema’s animated film Jumbo became an all-time record breaker, there was no runaway massive hit, with admissions split fairly evenly across the six films. There were perhaps too many films crowding into this window, an issue in most markets during major holiday seasons, and while figures are still being collated, the season as a whole may be down on the same period last year.

The first three films in the Danur franchise, also directed by Awi Suryadi, along with Kimo Stamboel’s spinoff Ivanna released in 2022, all drew between two to three million admissions, so this highly-anticipated last chapter could probably have expected bigger numbers in a corridor with less competition. However, the fact that it came out on top shows the continued strength of horror in this market, despite some recent signs of audience fatigue (see Streamlined’s Updated Guide to Indonesia for more on this market).

‘Dhurandhar: The Revenge’ Sets New Benchmarks For Nationalistic Filmmaking

Dhurandhar: The Revenge, starring Ranveer Singh as an Indian spy infiltrating Pakistan’s political and gangster networks, has been breaking records over the Eid and Hindu New Year holidays, scoring the second biggest global opening ever for an Indian title with $81m over five days (March 19-23).

Directed by Aditya Dhar and produced by Jio Studios and B62 Studios, the film had the biggest opening ever for a Hindi-language title and is the second biggest Indian opener behind Telugu-language Pushpa 2: The Rule which pulled in $97.9m in 2024. It’s the second part of a film initially shot as one movie but split into two during post. The first installment, Dhurandhar, was released in December 2025 and was a massive hit, becoming the highest-grossing Hindi film ever and the second-biggest Indian film of all time behind Pushpa 2.

It is, of course, also the latest in a long line of propaganda movies that have been released by the Hindi-language (popularly known as Bollywood) industry since Narendra Modi and the BJP party came to power in 2014. Bollywood was going through a post-pandemic box office slump before being courted by the BJP propaganda machine, resulting in a string of nationalistic movies also including The Kashmir Files, The Kerala Story, Article 370, Veer Savarkar and The Sabarmati Report.

These films span multiple genres including spy thrillers, historical dramas, biopics and supposed exposes of the truth behind real-life events. They’re all firmly in line with the BJP’s Hindu nationalist ideology and many play on India-Pakistan tensions and the Hindu-Muslim divide.

Both installments of Dhurandhar have attracted controversy for blending fact and fiction in their depiction of real-life events such as the 1999 Kandahar hijacking, 2008 Mumbai attacks and Modi’s demonetisation programme, in some cases rewriting history to support the BJP agenda. Both films have been banned in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries, which have large immigrant populations from both India and Pakistan and don’t want to increase tensions between them.

They’ve also both upped the ante in that they’re much more entertaining and well-made films than some of the propaganda titles that came before them. The controversy about their content only seems to have boosted the films’ appeal at the box office and on streaming platforms. While Pakistan has banned Indian films in its theatres since 2019, there’s no ban on Indian films on streaming platforms, and the first Dhurandhar topped the Netflix Pakistan chart when first launched in January 2026. While Netflix has worldwide rights to the first film, JioHotstar has reportedly taken rights to the one currently on release.

Unfortunately, Indian critics and journalists, along with stars and industry figures, who have mentioned the more troubling aspects of the content of these two films, have been subject to intense trolling and social media bullying, prompting the Film Critics Guild of India (FCG) to put out a statement last December to condemn the attacks. “What began as disagreement has rapidly devolved into coordinated abuse, personal attacks on individual critics, and organised attempts to discredit their professional integrity,” the FCG said in a statement. THR India was forced to take down its review of the first Dhurandhar film after being trolled.

Streamlined is finding it quite bemusing that the Western trades are covering the second film’s box office results without any mention of the nationalistic aspects of the content, or the trolling, despite the fact that they’re usually quick to categorise many Chinese movies as state-sanctioned propaganda. The Indian edition of Variety seems unphased by these elements in its review of the film, while THR India appears to have, perhaps quite wisely, avoided reviewing it at all.

While these attacks are coming from members of the public, rather than the government, India’s censorship continues to tighten, with Oscar-nominated The Voice Of Hind Rajab, about the killing of a five-year-old Palestinian girl by Israeli forces, recently being banned from theatrical release in India.

Dhurandhar: The Revenge was initially going up against a big South Indian film – Toxic: A Fairytale For Grownups, directed by Geetu Mohandas and starring Yash – but the producers of that film recently announced that its release has been postponed to June 4, citing the disruption in the Gulf region, which is a big box office territory for both Bollywood and South Indian films.

Gulf’s Eid Box Office Down But Not Out During US-Iran Conflict

The GCC territories may have missed out on a couple of big Indian films over the Eid holidays, but thanks to Hollywood, Arab and Pakistani releases, still managed to draw audiences to cinemas despite the ongoing US-Iran war.

Apart from a few temporary closures here and there, most of the cinema chains in the region, including pan-regional exhibitor Vox Cinemas, Saudi’s AMC Cinemas and Muvi Cinemas, and Novo Cinemas in Qatar and UAE, have kept their doors open. Films on release during this period have included Hollywood titles Hoppers, Scream 7, Project Hail Mary and The Bride, Pakistani films Aag Lagay Basti Mein and Bullah, Malayalam-language Aadu 3, Egyptian films Barshama and Family Business and Saudi production Shabab El Bomb 3.

While box office figures for this region are more difficult to obtain, Variety reported that although receipts have been lower than previous Eid holiday periods, they've also been “resilient” overall. Figures have also been affected by the lighter release slate and the timing of public holidays in various markets, rather than solely by cinema closures due to drone attacks.

The Saudi Arabia market – which has grown rapidly to become the the region’s largest since cinema-building started in 2018 – appears to have enjoyed relatively stable box office this past weekend, with local comedy Shabab El Bomb 3 grossing $1m (SAR3.9m), followed by Project Hail Mary and Egyptian comedy Family Business. However, it remains to be seen how future business will hold up as several Indian and Egyptian films are being postponed due to the conflict.

Meanwhile, across markets also celebrating Eid but less affected by the war, Barshama, a comedy about exam cheating, was the big hit in Egypt over the holidays, while Bangladesh saw five local films open headed by Domm, an action drama based on real-life events directed by Redoan Rony and starring Afran Nisho. In Pakistan, action comedy Aag Lagay Basti Mein and action drama Bullah were both reportedly pulling big audiences over the past weekend.

However, although most markets around the world are not at direct risk of missile attacks, that doesn’t mean they won’t suffer from this ongoing conflict in the Middle East. A potentially huge issue for cinemas in many parts of the world over coming weeks and months will be keeping the lights on during the energy crisis prompted by the war. Streamlined is already hearing reports of late-night screenings in some territories being cancelled because cinemas are worried about paying their electricity bills.

And before the steamers start getting smug – I’m old enough to remember the power cuts of the 1970s, and although just a little kid at the time, I do recall that we couldn’t watch TV while sitting in the dark.

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IN THE TRADES:

The following links provide a round-up of sales news, mostly from the recent Filmart market in Hong Kong, along with the latest streaming news coming out of Series Mania and from various global and regional streamers over the past few weeks.