Friday Matinee- Leela walks on

Vishu the festival of prosperity has showered the fruitful blessings on the Mollywood. The major films are more or less in a comfort zone and for the theater owners , other language movies has given them bumper business as well. King Liar leads for the time being in the race for the winner of Vishu season with Jacob catching it very fast to overtake. It may take another two weeks for a proper picture to emerge.

Kerala Top 5 movies as on 22/04/2016

1. Theri

Kerala box office literally therified by the gigantic opening week of the Tamil film Ilaya thalapathi Vijay. It has shattered all the existing records of Kerala box office by grossing mammoth opening to the highest week grosser. The director Atlee need special mention for the package he delivered. The festivity the film brought to the theaters is unexplainable proposition. The film has grossed 12.25 Cr in 7 days which no other films in Kerala have ever gathered in a week. The word earth shattering need some more vigorous word to express!

2. Jacobinte Swargarajyam

 After a very good first week the film has travelled to second week impressively. It slowly becomes one and only Malayalam film option for the family audience being a family drama from Vineeth- Nivin combo. Has collected 9.45 Crore in 13 days. Hit by trade sense and won’t stop here as it has more revenues are in queue in coming weeks but going to struggle to get Super hit status due to flood of films in coming weeks. The collection pattern remains the same as mentioned on April 18^th blog, the disparity between Major cities and small ones are widening .The chances of 20 Cr is a bleak prospectus but 15 Cr is achievable due to the good WOM it has that too in a slow pace spanning in its entire theater run. One of the disadvantage the film unlike other Nivin film is the weaker flow of repeated audience.

3. King Liar

Swiftly pass 7,000 shows but collection graph is on sliding side. But the family audience may give a chance for this film if it can hold on for a week or so. The distributors sense the opportunity and holds it in single screens. The film has collected around 14.45 Cr in 20 days and likely to add another 1.5 Cr to 2 Cr in the remaining run. Box office wise Super Hit by all means with show counts to reach 9,000 by the end of next week. Sidhique- Lal should have concentrated on the one liner slapstick as many of them in the film miserably missed the target. Audience expects humour only in these sort of film if they are felt ‘not fully satisfied ‘with the comedy the chance o blockbuster there to evade.

4. Jungle book

This Hollywood wonder is the real darling of the season in Kerala. Kids and family virtually occupied the theaters and made it a record breaker Hollywood movie. Collected around 6.20 Cr in 13 days. Blockbuster in terms of unique performance of an English movie in Kerala.  

5.Kali

There is pattern of box office performance in every Dulquer Salman’s film. The huge opening and excellent first week and average second week followed by a low key third week. Kali also falls in the said category. After tremendous first week collection the film painstakingly saw a sharp fall in collection restricting it to settle around 13.10 Cr in 4 weeks with around 8000 shows. Of the total gross 65% comes from first week itself. The film has impressive thread but in the second half the Director and script writer confused to develop the plot in which way. Now they may be feeling of wonderful opportunity handled imperfectly. But super hit as of now while the budget is on the lower. Onward journey will be with meager revenues expected in the reaming run.

After all sorts of threat of ban and restriction on release ,Leela released in Kerala that too in a big manner with 65 screens to its credit. FDFS viewers are giving thumps up to Biju menon for his excellent performance in the role of Kuttiyappan and WOM is totally mixed. Critics are rating it good but ordinary viewers are vertically split on the opinion.  The online release reportedly crossed 10,000 fills the one third of the cost of the film. We will have rough idea by next week how it fares in the box office.