The coming Friday could well be renamed Kabaliday. Yes, Tamil cinema’s demi-god Rajinikanth’s latest film releases on July 22 and all roads will lead to a theatre near you playing Kabali, especially if you are south of the Vindhyas.
According to reports, talks are on in Chennai for the first show of Kabali to kick-off from as early as 1 am onwards! In Mumbai, the celebrations for the film’s release will start from 6 am in the morning, when fans take a 66-ft poster of Rajinikanth to the temple for blessings in Matunga.
The Rajinikanth Fans Association of Mumbai will also hold a blood donation and eye check-up camp on the release day besides distributing food packets to the poor and homeless. The first show then starts in this mini-Madras suburb’s Aurora theatre from 9 am onwards.
Tamil film journalist and trade analyst Sreedhar Pillai says that Kabali is all set to release across over 4000 screens worldwide in 3 languages – Tamil, Telugu and Hindi. Malayalam star Mohanlal has bought the film rights for Kerala. A Malay version of Kabali will release on July 29, while Chinese, Japanese, Thai and Indonesian language prints of the film are expected to be out in September.
The advance booking for the Rajinikanth-starrer has been huge as well.
According to Indianexpress.com, a popular theatre chain in Chennai sold out all of its 96 shows across 27 screens for the first three days. To get an idea of the Rajinikanth mania that’s taken over Chennai, eat this – at Abirami cinemas, the advance booking started on Monday at 9 am and the tickets for all 16 shows for the opening weekend were sold out in one hour.
In a piece for The Hindu, Pillai mentions that the film’s producer Kalaippuli S Thanu has sold the rights of the film across the world for about Rs 200 crore, making it the highest-ever pre-release business done for a Tamil film.
Rajini fans are now pitting the film against Salman Khan’s recent hit Sultan. Salman’s film raked in Rs 200 crore in 7 days, can Rajinikanth who is catering to a much smaller market but much wider mania be able to repeat that success? Kabali’s producer Kalaippuli Thanu is up for the challenge. Speaking to Indiatoday.intoday.in, the man says:
Go to Mumbai and try to purchase a ticket of Sultan it would have cost you Rs 1500, now you go to Bangalore and say Kabali, you will pay Rs 1500 per ticket, but let me tell you that in Tamil Nadu with just Rs 120/80 and 50 a ticket we will bring in 200 crores. So imagine what will happen then? We will be collecting ten times more than Sultan.Kalaippuli Thanu (Producer, Kabali)
No doubt, the release of Kabali is going to slow down Sultan’s dream run the box-office, which has collected Rs 500 crore worldwide in 12 days so far. But given the hysteria around Kabali and frenzy surrounding Rajinikanth, will the Tamil star emerge as the Sultan of the box-office? Or is it time for Salman to sing Neruppu Da (I am fire da)?
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