Taran Adarsh

Till a few years ago, a well-made film would show an escalation in business on the basis of a strong word of mouth. But the trend seems to have weakened quite a bit, of late. Today, only in the rarest of rare cases does business show an upward trend, over the Friday numbers. That too if the word of mouth is unanimously positive.

Another fallacy that exists in the industry is that the maker's last film is the deciding factor on Friday, when a cinegoer goes to watch his new film.

Both thoughts have proved wrong yet again. TEREE SANG didn't show a radical jump in business, despite a positive word of mouth. Nor did RGV's previous accomplishment (his PHOONK took a flying start) compel viewers to flock cineplexes when AGYAAT opened. Overall, in the week gone by, the business remained on the lower side.

LOVE AAJ KAL dominated the show -- even though its business fell by 65% in its second weekend -- despite the presence of two new releases made by accomplished names - RGV and Satish Kaushik, respectively.

But what works in favour of both, AGYAAT and TEREE SANG is its low cost. UTV and RGV have already recovered approx. Rs. 3 crores from the sale of Telugu rights and the remainder Rs. 3 crores shouldn't be a problem from the Hindi market.

TEREE SANG, on the other hand, did quite well in a handful of plexes, but not across the board. One expected the youth and family audiences to patronise the film, but while the youth trickled in, a heavy participation from families was missing.

The third release, CHAL CHALEIN, got completely sidelined due to stiff competition in the fray.