Maintaining a successful franchise is incredibly difficult. Directors and producers have to be extremely cautious to meet the high standards of their fans. We have seen series like Dhoom, Pushpa, KGF, and Kantara achieve massive success because they kept their quality high. Unfortunately, many sequels fail to deliver, and it looks like Mardaani 3 is currently showing signs of a box office failure.
Bollywood has always loved the "sequel" formula. Rani Mukerji’s first Mardaani was a huge hit in 2014, mostly because audiences had no expectations. It started as a small-budget crime thriller and ended up earning 60 crores—a record for that time. Mardaani 2 followed in 2019 and kept the excitement alive with a tight 105-minute runtime and a terrifying villain, eventually collecting about 68 crores.
Now, seven years later, we have Mardaani 3. While there was some buzz at the start, the film has failed to repeat its previous success. Trade experts estimate that the total revenue will stay below 35 crores. This is a big shock for a franchise that was once considered a "guaranteed hit."
The main challenge is the story, which follows a very predictable pattern. The plot is about a female criminal (Amma) who runs a massive operation kidnapping children for a beggar mafia. While this is a serious subject, the impact was lost because of dull scenes and predictable twists. It felt like a standard movie rather than the high-pressure, gritty thriller we expect from a Shivani Shivaji Roy film.
In the first two parts, the tight screenplay was the biggest strength. This time, even at just two hours long, the movie feels like a drag. Rani Mukerji tried her absolute best to carry the film, but even her powerful performance couldn’t save the weak writing. One major downside is that each film in this series had a different director—this time it was Abhiraj Minawala—and it feels like the original "soul" of the franchise got lost.