Tejas, starring Kangana Ranaut, has turned out to be a major failure. The first three days of sales were flat, and less than Rs. 10 crores is anticipated in lifetime sales. News Agency conducted interviews with exhibitors nationwide to learn about the film’s box office performance.
Under the condition of anonymity, an exhibitor stated, “Even on a Sunday, the occupancy was bad.” In each show, there are barely ten or twelve people. More than half of the shows are cancelled starting on Monday.
“The film is not as bad as the collections reflect,” he continued. Yes, the VFX is subpar. But you may watch it. But the movie has received zero acceptance. “12th Fail’s shows are very limited, but it’s doing better business than,” he also disclosed.
Vishek Chauhan, owner of Roopbani Cinema in Purnia, Bihar, minced no words as he said, “Tejas is an unmitigated disaster. For the first time this year, the morning show in my theatre got cancelled because of zero ticket sales.” He continued, “Hardly 20-30 people were there in the rest of the shows.”
Kiritbhai T Vaghasia, who runs The Friday Cinema multiplex in Surat, shocked us as he said that all 15 shows of Tejas from Friday to Sunday were cancelled due to zero audience. He said, “Not a single show of Tejas has been played in my theatre. There were zero bookings. On Friday, I gave one whole audi to Tejas and decided to play 6 shows as it’s just 2 hours long. But due to no audience, I decided to play 3 shows of Tejas on Saturday.”
“We have a policy that we play a show only if there are 10 patrons,” he continued. We anticipated that Tejas would draw at least 4-5 viewers for a minimum of one episode. Not even that occurred. Sunday has seen a repetition of the same events. “No one has come to even inquire about Tejas,” he said. Is it not unbelievable?
But Kirtibhai exhaled with relief as he declared, “Leo has taken its place in the exhibitions. Its business is flourishing. The other multiplexes in the vicinity have chosen not to screen the movie because of certain difficulties, therefore my theatre is the only one in this area showing it.
The theatres and multiplexes that aren’t showing Leo aren’t very fortunate. “We have reduced the shows of Tejas but there’s nothing else to replace it with,” a duty manager at a major multiplex stated.
The 1000-seat Gaiety in the G7 multiplex in Mumbai is run by Manoj Desai, who said, “The collections are worse.” “On Sunday, we were able to get one hundred viewers,” he clarified. There were fewer than 100 moviegoers for the remaining shows.
Manoj Desai has decided to continue playing Tejas on the weekdays in Gaiety and not play it in the smaller audis like 100-seater Gossip due to no other exciting content. He has given an incentive to pull audiences, “From Monday, I have reduced the rates of stall from Rs. 130 to Rs. 100 and of balcony from Rs. 150 to Rs. 110.”
Satadeep Saha, CEO of SSR Cinemas Pvt Ltd, meanwhile, said, “As per our limited expectations, Tejas is doing good. Of course, it could have done better.”
