HOW MUCH WILL ENDHIRAN EARN?

Many would have wondered about the high budget movies being made nowadays and I am one of them. To just know better about box office collections I just browsed in the net and learnt certain things about how the film makers get back their revenues and wondered how much Kalanidhi Maran would expect from Endhiran. The following is my attempt to try to make my friends aware of a box office collection report.

To begin with we hear about total /gross box office collections. They are just the total amount of revenue generated from the sale of tickets world wide wherever the movie has been screened. For example, the recent top grosser was Dasavatharam, breaking all records it’s said to have collected $290 crores world wide. A movie made in budget of around 150 crore rupees has collected so much. But the whole $290 crores wont come to the producer. There is entertainment tax worldwide everywhere except in Tamilnadu especially for Tamil movies named in Tamil!! So grossly we can keep the total revenue to be 60% of the total collections.

A producer making a film can either screen the movie worldwide himself or usually its not possible, so he sells the rights based on the area wise to distributors and the distributor screens in the theatres.

Gross collection minus the entertainment tax is
Endhiran


called the net collection, the theatres screening the movie will take their share from it and give the rest to the distributor based on the rent they levy or based on the deals they make, which will be around 60:40 or 50:50 favoring the distributor for the initial two weeks and then around 60:40 or 70:30 favoring the theater owners form third or fourth week onwards when the collection decreases considerably. So after the theater owner has taken his share the distributor will take his share which may be in percentage basis or as in Tamilnadu the distributor takes whole collection till the amount he paid for getting the movie is reached and then shares the excess profit with the producer.

Only certain stars have the Minimum Guarantee status where in the distributors should give whatever rate the producer fixes per area. Rajini, Kamal, Vijay and I think Ajith have that status now. So Sun pictures can fix their own rates to area wise to distributors. For e.g. NAC, Nilgiris, and the important FMS which represents Foreign, Malaysia and Singapore. For other actors the distributors will see the movie and fix the rate.

As we know Rajini’s market is not just Malaysia and Singapore but UK, USA, South Africa, and Japan and even in rest of Europe and Asia. So there will be lots of competition for the distribution rights in those areas and I am sure Sun pictures would easily double their investment as collection from just movie screening.[remember audio, video and satellite rights also]. As per my guess the minimum gross collection of $350 crores is expected to come and it will make everyone involved with Endhiran happy and apart from that I am sure it will make Indian cinema, especially Tamil cinema very proud. Thank you Rajini and team. Cheers!!!!

Venkat Dr
drkvenkat@ymail.com