Aamir Khan thriller breaks Bollywood records

Bollywood action thriller "Dhoom 3", starring Aamir Khan, has smashed box office records to become the highest grossing Indian film of all time, according to industry experts Tuesday.

The third film in the Dhoom franchise, which has been likened to Hollywood's "Fast and Furious", is the first Indian film to cross the five-billion rupee mark ($80 million or RM262.68 million) in gross revenues around the world, according to its production house Yash Raj Films.

The group said late Monday that the cop caper had grossed 5.01 billion rupees, and trade experts confirmed it had surpassed the previous highest-grossing Bollywood film, a title recently clinched by Shah Rukh Khan's "Chennai Express".

"Dhoom 3 is the number one Bollywood film worldwide," said Vajir Singh, editor of Box Office India.

Unlike in Hollywood, there is no central data management service for box office collections in India, which can lead to a discrepancy in figures.

Single screen ticket sales remain uncomputerised and while multiplex collections are computerised, they are not linked on one network, so gross collection figures are usually supplied by the distributor.

Singh attributed the success of the "Dhoom 3" partly to the "star appeal" of Aamir Khan, whose earlier 2010 film "3 Idiots" held the highest-grossing record for more than three years.

"Dhoom 3", directed by Vijay Krishna Acharya and also starring Abhishek Bachchan and Katrina Kaif, is set largely in Chicago and tells the story of an Indian cop, his sidekick and their latest adversary, an illusionist played by Khan.

"It's huge and this record won't be easy to break anytime soon," said trade analyst Komal Nahta of the success of the film, which was released on December 20 and has been shown at more than 4,400 screens in India and 750 screens abroad.