Balayya ahead of Ravi Teja, yet festive mood fails to drive box office
Leading distributors from Andhra Pradesh and Telangana are worried a lot since the collections for ‘Bhagavanth Kesari’ and ‘Tiger Nageswara Rao, aren’t overwhelming although first-day openings are good. They claim that the response to star-studded movies during Dussera would always be quite encouraging but not this time around. “Frankly, the mood is a bit dampening among movie buffs this season in both Telugu states. Usually, Dussera holiday crowds throng theatres for four to five days to watch their favorite stars making mincemeat of their opponents. This time, collections are dipping from the second day itself after tremendous day one collection,” says a distributor.
He admits that Balakrishna has an edge over his rival Ravi Teja. Since ‘Bhagavanath Kesari’ clocked Rs 20 odd crores in two days, while ‘Tiger Nageswara Rao’ managed to draw just Rs 8 crores on the first day and both films have to go a long way to recover their Rs 70-odd crores investments in the two Telugu states.
"Balakrishna’s film is surely ahead at the moment since it had sensational day-one openings but the collections are dipping a bit. Despite triggering huge hype, Ravi Teja's action film ‘Tiger Nageswara Rao’ just managed Rs 8 crores and still counting. The most alarming fact about these two big films is that the occupancy in 1000-ood theaters is just varying between 40 to 45% instead of 80 or 90 percent which usually happens during festivals, that’s quite worrisome,” he adds.
Even the Tamil dubbed movie ‘Leo’ couldn’t really set the box office on fire in Telugu states while he opened overwhelmingly in Tamil Nadu and other states. “Leo’ is a technically polished film and could draw some crowds this weekend. However, producers of Telugu films have to go all out and promote their films aggressively to attract holiday crowds in B and C centers since youngsters would have reached their homes to celebrate the festival. We have to see how the collections would pick up in the next few days since the success of these films will augur for Tollywood,” he points out.
Hope producers of Bhagavanth Kesari and Tiger Nageswara Rao listen and put all their efforts into attracting more footfalls with multiple promotions and yatras. "Nowadays, the first three to four days are crucial for films to mint money since the days of recovering money in the long run have gone," he concludes.
