Panic At The Boxoffice: This Week’s 2 Biggies Record Poor Advance  Booking

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.