Malayalam film industry has hit a rare hat-tric this year by getting 100 films to theatre, the third consecutive year to reach this number. 102 films have released in the year up to September 6, the last release date. However, the industry could boast only a dozen in the list of Blockbusters. While counting the number of days, February may be the shortest month, but 17 films were released in just 28 days. Earlier, the industry treated the month of June unsuitable for releases. However, this year the number of film released reached 17 in June. August was the lean month with just seven releases, as September has five films in just six days. This year three festival seasons, Vishu, Eid and Onam together had 14 films.
It was in 2012 that Malayalam film industry, after a long time reached the magic number of 100 films in a year, thanks to the spiraling satellite rates. Then 127 films were released in 52 weeks with 43rd week seeing the release of 100th film. However, 2013 rewrote the history as 158 films, an all time record hit the screens in the blockbuster year. This year, if reaching 100 took 36 weeks or 222 days, in 2013 it happened in just 32 weeks, in August. Incidentally, last year too the 100th film came in Onam season as it did this year.
According to industry sources, the dip in satellite rates attributes this year’s ‘ slow pace’.
The year 2014 witnessed the films getting released in large number of theatres. On some occasions, the outside kerala theatres outnumberd that in the home state. The trend started with with Anjali Menon’s Bangalore Days. Mollywood saw the release of films worldwide with release centres between 200 and 300 worldwide.
Incidetally Bangalore Days can claim the title of being the biggest hit beating all records, in a year with a large number of hits this year. The Nivin Pauly-Dulquar Salman-Nazriya Nazim multistarrer made history in its box office collection. The movie reportedly collected `10 crore in the first week of its release, which is more than that of any other movie released in 2014. From the centres outside Kerala, the movie had collected around `50 lakhs within the first one week. Even Drishyam which was released last year could not achieve this feat within the first week of its release.
If Bangalore Days was all about celebrating youth, more serious movies like Apothecary, that talked about the intricate relationship of a doctor and an ailing patient and Mammootty starrer Munnariyippu that required brain and heart to watch, also needs a mention in the list of good cinema this year. Rajeev Ravi’s Njan Steve Lopez, a thriller movie that can be tagged as bold and the light-hearted entertainer Vikramadithyan, Sapthamashree Thaskarah and Manju Warrier’s How Old Are You all comes in the list of hitmakers of M-Town in the last nine months.