Day 3 of the box office results for The Kerala Story show that Adah Sharma’s movie had a phenomenal opening weekend, earning over Rs 35 crore.

Amid backlash for its alleged factual inaccuracies, director Sudipto Sen’s controversial film The Kerala Story is minting big money at the box office. Released on Friday, the two day collection of the movie stood at almost Rs 20 crore. Now, on Sunday, it raked in a massive Rs 16.50 crore approx, as reported by industry tracker Sacnilk. The day 3 numbers are almost 50 per cent higher than the previous day.

The Kerala Story thus had a successful weekend with total collection standing at Rs 35.75 crore. The website also stated that the film enjoyed a 52.92 per cent occupancy in the Hindi market. As per estimates, the film is already a hit. While the collection may dip a little over weekdays, with no big movie apart from Hollywood’s Guardians of the Galaxy in theatres, audiences are expected to turn up for The Kerala Story.

Starring Adah Sharma, Yogita Bihani, Siddhi Idnani and Sonia Balani, The Kerala Story was earlier officially described as the story of more than 32,000 Kerala women who’d allegedly been radicalised by Islamic fundamentalists. However, the number was changed to three from 32,000 after protests began online against the misinformation being spread by the film.

With the film garnering criticisms and also threats of protests, the Tamil Nadu Multiplex Association on Sunday announced their decision to stop screening the film in the state. President of Tamil Nadu Theatre and Multiplex Owners Association, M Subramaniam confirmed the news that some multiplexes that had shown the film had decided to withdraw it. The decision comes in the wake of protests led by the Naam Tamilar Katchi (NTK) demanding to halt The Kerala Story’s screenings in the state, from May 7 onwards.

The film also could not manage to impress critics. The Indian Express’ Shubhra Gupta wrote in her review of the film, “The film itself is nothing but a poorly-made, poorly-acted rant which is not interested in interrogating the social complexities of Kerala, an India state proud of its multi-religious, multi-ethnic identity. All it is intent upon is creating the most simplistic, paper-thin characters to tell us that Kerala is in danger because its innocent, naïve Hindu and Christian girls are being swayed by evil Muslim men, and radicalised to the point of no return.”