The Sankranthi festival is over and here in its aftermath we have history being created at the box office. Two biggies clashed and both are going to be big successes at the box office. The last time multiple successes happened for Sankranthi was in the year 2006 when three films were all successes released in the same weekend. The only difference is that in 2006 there was only one biggie and the other two starred smaller or unknown names. In 2013 we have two biggies clashing with each other and both being success at the box office.
Sankranthi festival has always been a very lucrative festival for the Telugu cinema. The trade always looks forward to the Sankranthi releases and updates about it through out the year as it has the potential to always get the biggest records and hits given the right film. Naturally then every biggie if the schedule permits plans to have a release for the Sankranthi festival.
This year was a special one, not one but two ‘real’ biggies released for the same festival. In the past such instances have occurred but have been very far off from each other and of course some times there was a gap of one week. The real battle of biggies that happened for Sankranthi festival last time was a more than a decade ago in 2001 when Megastar Chiranjeevi, Nandamuri Balakrishna and Victory Venkatesh clashed with their films. Back then Nandamuri Balakrishna won the competition by a mile with his film Narasimhanaidu becoming an Industry Hit.
This year saw Mega Power Star Ram Charan’s Naayak pitted against a multistarrer Seethamma Vakitlo Sirimalle Chettu starring Victory Venkatesh and Superstar Mahesh Babu. Things could have been completely one sided had the multistarrer been a mass venture but it being a complete family entertainer evened things out. It was as simple a clash as one could get. A mass movie versus a class movie and while generally our box office shows a class movie is never a competition to the mass movie, here the class movie being the first true blue multistarrer in decades helped its cause big time.
Result, records were shattering as each day was passing and together the two films have collected a mind-blowing share of more than 50 Cr in just Andhra Pradesh alone for the festive week. To put things into perspective, the current first week record holder Power Star Pawan Kalyan’s Gabbar Singh had a 25 Cr plus share in its first week without any competition, here two films had a similar or close share with competition. Just goes on to show the kind of goldmine the Sankranthi festival is.
It’s going to be a win-win situation for both the parties involved barring a few circuits (as things stand today). But on the whole both are going to be a huge success. How big, the time would tell, for a new generation out their though, who don’t know what truly a festive advantage means there couldn’t be a better possible example to show.
Lets hope this is just the beginning and things go better and bigger as the year progresses further.
