After hours of tense discussions and boardroom haggling, the producers of Kochadaiiyaan - Eros International and MediaOne Global - announced that the Superstar’s film would miss it’s May 9 release date - taking the tally of it’s release delays to six. Citing “technical difficulties” in supplying the “massive demand for prints” across six languages, the producers have pushed the release by two weeks to May 23 instead.
Eros, in a statement, said that they were attempting to supply a whopping 6,000 prints, though the trade response has raised scepticism to that number. “The Tamil prints have been ready for a while But unfortunately, the Hindi prints were not rendered in time and the demand for 3D prints kept on coming and we were unable to meet the demand at the last minute,” said a source at the production house in T Nagar. The non-completion of dubbing and censoring in all six languages that the Rajini-starrer is set to release in - Tamil, Telugu, Hindi, Bhojpuri, Punjabi and Malayalam - was the reason beyond the last delay as well.
Directed by his daughter Soundarya R Ashwin, the `125-crore film’s loss is many other Kollywood producers’ gain - Yaamirukka Bayamey, produced by Elred Kumar and starring Kreshna Kulasekaran announced within an hour of Kochadaiiyaan’s delay, that they would be releasing their film on Friday. Barely two hours later, Studio Green Productions announced that they had picked up Santhanam’s solo hero flick Vallavanukku Pullum Ayutham and would release it on May 10. “Red Giant Productions is seriously considering releasing A L Vijay’s rural-centric film Saivam as well said well-placed sources. Most of these producers had shelved these films, waiting for Kochadaiiyaan release storm to tide over, but with two clear weeks and plenty of desperate theatre owners, they’ve well and truly come to the party.
Why was there a delay in producing and disseminating prints? Distributors from across the State have been in talks with the production house, apparently haggling over the premium amount that was charged for the motion-capture flick. Distributors from the Salem circle said they couldn’t agree on a rate till Wednesday. “There has not been a Rajini release in 4 years. We all lost money with Baba, but we were willing to spend money on him. Several of us upgraded sound and screens for this film, but they were asking for `10 lakh-`15 lakh for even B centre screens. That is why the discussion kept dragging,” they claimed. This is well over the price that even Endhiran commanded and even big ticket releases from Ajith and Vijay command less than a third of that amount.