The tussle between agitating Shiv Sena workers and the Mumbai police over the release of the Shahrukh Khan starrer My Name Is Khan is likely to cause financial losses to the tune of Rs 40-45 crore for producers, distributors and film exhibitors.
Made at a budget of around Rs 45 crore and sold to Fox Star Studios for Rs 85 crore, My Name Is Khan has been subjected to anger and wrath of Shiv Sena because of the comments made by Shah Rukh Khan in favour of selection of Pakistani cricket players for IPL-III.
On day 1 of the advanced bookings for the upcoming film, the Mumbai police arrested over 1,200 agitating Shiv Sena workers. Most of the 63 theatres in Mumbai stopped the advance booking on Wednesday and with hundreds of them across the state following suit; it could lead to a dismal opening for the most-awaited Bollywood film of this year.
The multiplex association and film analysts say as Maharashtra and Mumbai together contribute a third of the domestic box office collections for big Hindi films, they are staring at a huge financial loss in the coming weekend.
My Name Is Khan will be released on Friday with over 2,000 prints. Around 300 prints are being released for Maharshtra alone. "If the average footfall in cinema theatre drops to under 35% this weekend in Mumbai coupled with anticipated disruptions and fear among cine goers in Maharashtra, we are looking at a potential loss of Rs 40-45 crore to the film business," a top executive of a leading multiplex in Mumbai said.
"Losses on account of the damage to the publicity materials of the film and attacks to various theatres in the past few days have also been factored in," the executive said.
Most of the film exhibitor chains, including Cinemax, Big Cinema, PVR, Inox, etc have stopped advance bookings within hours on Wednesday after incidents of violence and losses to cinema properties reported in the suburbs of Mumbai.
According to film analysts, any big Hindi film tends to recover almost half its cost in the first three days of the release.
"Maharashtra and Mumbai together account of a third of the country's box office collections. My Name Is Khan, with its global release and hype could easily gross over Rs 100 crore within the first week. But with an atmosphere of fear prevailing in Mumbai and elsewhere, a bulk of collections will not come, causing loss to the production, distribution and exhibition business," said a Mumbai-based film distributor.
In order to counter the potential loss of business, My Name Is Khan will have a strong distribution network in overseas markets. Over 100 prints are earmarked for each of the United States, the United Kingdom and the markets in the Gulf region and southeast Asia. Smaller number of prints will go to other parts of the world including Europe and the African continent, a film analyst said.
