The advance-booking reports for Aamir Khan’s Laal singh Chaddha and Akshay Kumar’s Raksha Bandhan which open on Thursday, are not very encouraging. And that’s putting it mildly.
According to well-placed sources in three multiplex chains the advance reports for both films range from “average” to “below expectation” depending on the location of the theatres. Laal Singh Chaddha is “slightly better” at ‘A’ Centres while Raksha Bandhan has a “minor edge” in smaller cities.
A personnel from a multiplex chain who is not authorized to speak officially says, “It is a panic situation. If an Aamir Khan starrer can’t get footfalls then the film business is doomed.”
This source reveals , “If the advance bookings are any indication then the audience is not much interested in any of the two films. The question is, what are they interested in?”
In the bid to expand the theatre-going audiences’ bandwidth both Laal Singh Chaddha and Raksha Badhan will stream on the OTT platform after a minimum of a two-month gap after their theatre release.
But is that enough of a bait to magnetize the audiences into theatres in numbers large enough for the two costly films to be considered hits? We will soon know the answer.
