- Megastar’s comeback movie has grossly mismanaged by the overseas distributor wrt to pricing, scheduling, marketing and communication.
- The distributor failed to capitalize on the movie’s gargantuan openings, which were due to the sheer craze of Megastar.
Khaidi No 150 is one of the most anticipated movies ever in Telugu cinema. Megastar is returning to silver screen after a hiatus of 9 years, producer Charan’s marketing blitzkrieg and chartbuster songs…together has generated extraordinary pre-release hype. For overseas, Classic Entertainments has acquired distribution rights for 12 crores of which 2 crores were recoverable.
Even though there was scant marketing and planning by the distributor, Khaidi No 150 has managed to rake in staggering $1.3 Million on Premiere day. Though the movie has been doing reasonably well grossing $880k in the next 6 days, many NRIs and in particular Megastar fans opine that the distributor has failed in further optimizing the movie revenues. In fact, in various cities, Megastar fans proactively took initiatives in fixing the schedules.
Sankranti season has become a festive season for movies in US also. Gautamiputra Satakarni also had good buzz as it is Balakrishna’s 100th movie and it is an Untold story of a warrior directed by creative director Krish. Similarly, Satamanam Bhavati is family entertainer produced by Dil Raju, aimed at NRIs. Both these distributors took good care of marketing, press notes and publicity. However, Classics ( Khaidi No.150 ) was lagging in all the aspects.
Here are some critical areas where the distributor of Khaidi No 150 has bungled:
Pricing:
This is a super critical decision for any movie and Classics has mispriced the movie. Khaidi No 150 was releasing amidst competition from Gautamiputra Satakarni (Pricing $15) and Satamanam Bhavati (Pricing $12). For Khaidi No 150, premieres were priced at $25 , during the entire first weekend it was $20 in many cities. This over pricing had driven away many families from watching this movie. A reasonable pricing would have increased footfall through the week. Many areas were running at $19 on Monday which is causing negative impact in families
Worst of all pricing issues was : Kids tickets were priced at $18 in many places, which was later reduced after fans’ insisted to cut the price as many families are abusing
Scheduling:
Even though the release date was fixed few weeks in advance, the distributor had failed to lock in optimal screen timings.
- New Jersey AMC 18 there were only two premiere shows scheduled. Regal Commerce 18 had another three shows, total of 5 premieres in this area. Typically, at these two theaters combined, Big stars’ Telugu movies have a minimum of 9 premiere shows
- AMC Newport had two premiere shows, which were sold out in advance. But, no additional shows were added
- There wasn’t even a single theater in Jersey City – NJ, which is a big market for Telugu movies.
- In Cary – Raleigh, Dhruva had three shows per day even last week, while Khaidi No 150 had only one show per day.
- Centerville premieres were sold out five days in advance but not a single show was added for premiere day
The above list can go ON and ON as we had a number of fans complaining about lack of shows or timings.
Communication:
It is a good sign that all the major distributors are on Twitter platform these days. We see they are actively resolving concerns raised y movie lovers which is a good sign
- However, there is lot to be improved in communication aspect. We got messages from a number of chiranjeevi fans that the distributor doesn’t reply to emails or phone. He was not active on twitter after first day.
Press Notes:
There were no press notes sent inspite of the gigantic premieres that Khaidi No 150 had. There were many rumors going in the mainstream media (such as Sakshi, AJ) that a major chunk of the premieres collection is attributed to T-mobile promotion. Telugu360 has consistently maintained that while the promo helped, the major factor has been the enormous craze on the movie and that all the non-Fandango theaters also did well. The distributor never tried to address this issue. A colossal mistake!!
The only press note was sent on Jan 16th and it is rile with pathetic grammar that we decided not to publish it. (This is a pet peeve for us. Distributors spend millions of dollars buying the rights, but hesitate to spend few bucks to get good press notes written)
With proper planning and marketing, Khaidi No 150 would have grossed much more, it would have hit $3M mark by now.
A great opportunity missed.
Below is first paragraph of the press note we received, which is full of pathetic grammar. Read for yourself.
As all are aware that a leading overseas distributor Classic films brought the most prestigious, Megastar enacted film ‘Khaidi No.150’ into the overseas market and it is roaring at Overseas Box-offices by crossing a 2million dollar mark in USA (this is not even a sentence). The film was taken a 4th position in USA by collecting a magical figure of 2million dollars in a short period of 6days.
