Doubtful stories wade through box office due to festival holidays

Despite critics and general audience panning recent Sankranthi releases of big stars, few star-studded movies drew sensational openings. These movies wouldn't have made so much money if they were released during non-festival season.

"That is the reason why producers of Mahesh Babu and Allu Arjun movies held various rounds of parleys since they were unwilling to give up the advantage of four to five days of festival holidays and came to an understanding.

To mint sensational opening collections, which would have been difficult otherwise," says distributor Ramakrishna, who feels that festival crowds thronged the theatres and helped the films which didn't have 'strong' content to recover 60 to 70% of their huge investments in the first four days.

"Trolling on star movies was highest in the recent times. One film had a disjointed story without any connection between first and second part, while the other one was almost similar to director's previous movies, kind of deja vu for the viewers.

Even critics found gaping holes and illogical points in the scripts, but star charisma coupled with holiday mania saved the day for them," he adds.

Superstar Mahesh Babu 'Sarileru…..' was sold for more than Rs 100 crore world over on theatricals, while Allu Arjun's movie was pegged around Rs 88 crore "No doubt, Mahesh clocked more than Rs 31 crore on day one and Allu Arjun Rs 22 crore plus, highest in their respective careers.

'Mixed' response from the audience and even fans dented their collections a bit, but they have to hold strong for one more week to recover their huge investments or distributors will face losses," says distributor Srinivas, who refers to 'Darbar' which is unable to recover modest Rs 14 crore due to 'poor content.'

"Despite scathing reviews and mixed public opinion, Telugu audience will go out and watch a movie, just to check out, why the film is bad. That attitude is helping stars as 'Entha ...' garnered Rs 3 crore plus on first day on Jan 15." informs distributor Vamsi Kishore.