While in Bollywood, Ghajini started the trend of the 'Rs 100 crore club', Sandalwood too is beginning to look at such benchmarks in its first week box office collections.
Puneet Rajkumar’s film Anna Bond, which released last year, did roaring business and collected around Rs 12 crore-plus in the opening week. The buzz in the industry is that Anna Bond, which was released in 145-plus theatres, got a massive opening by collecting Rs 3 crore-plus on its release day itself.
But the biggest hit in the history of Kannada cinema was Kranti Veera Sangolli Rayanna which was made at a cost of Rs 30 crore, and collected the amount in 22 days, with screenings all over Karnataka. The film later made huge profits and successfully completed 100 days in many theatres.
The latest sensation in Sandalwood is Bachchan, which managed to rake in a gross collection of `8 crore in the first week of its release. The film was released in 194 theatres in Karnataka. Producer Uday K Mehta has also released the film overseas and is glad to have got positive feedback along with huge revenues too.
Now Bulbul is all set to create a new record with box-office collections estimated at a gross of `5 crore within the first three days of its opening. Bulbul was released in 160 centres across Karnataka and has managed to break records and witness above average collections. As per predictions, the film could easily gross `10 crore in the next seven days.
Producer Dinakar of Bulbul is sitting in the driver’s seat as profits have started pouring in. He said. “We have made a collection `4.78 crore in 162 theatres. This could happen only because of the demand for more shows. For example, in Davanagere, the number of shows were increased from 4 to 6. Later, because of the rush, extra two shows were added in theatres located in the same compound. If this was the scenario in Davanagere, Mysore was not far behind. All these put together, the film is now claiming the crown as hopes are high for a good revenue.”
According to distributor Basha, Kannada industry has improved in terms of collection from past one year. “We did not expect huge returns so this comes as a surprise to us. Even films like Drama, Mynaa, Simple Aagi Ondhu Love Story have made decent collections. The digital system has come as a great advantage in terms of earnings. The days of prints are waning and will be gone. Screening films digitally is now reaching even small towns. Not long ago, we would get results from small districts centres after six months. But now, with the audience watching the movie immediately, results are instant. In fact, the industry is not looking at the number of days a movie is running in theatres; at present what matters is revenue and the returns.”
Dinakar agrees with Basha. He said, “Films used to get released at B and C centres much later because prints would have to be delivered there. Now the market has grown because of digital media, which is a good sign for the Kannada industry. Equally, publicity of a film now reaches far and wide and expenses for promotions have doubled. Earlier, promotions would cost us `5 lakh, now just posters go up to `15 lakh. There was a time when the Tamil industry earned `10 crore and now they have reached the `100 crore club. If we have good number of films, it is not so hard to reach that mark,” said Dinakar.
Dinakar is thrilled with people coming back to theatres but he realises that less than 20 per cent of the population is watching movies, which is less compared to other regions. “At least 50 per cent of the population watches Tamil films in Chennai. If the percentage of Kannada viewership increases, our industry can also be part of the `100 crore club,” he says.