Nag, Karthi, Tamannah starrer Oopiri released on Thursday got excellent reviews. In fact, this is one movie after Manam, which got unanimous positive reviews across the board. Telugu360 rated this movie at 3.5. Since this is a long weekend with spring break for most of the kids in USA, a huge market is up for grabs for Oopiri. However, lack of proper planning and good theater selection is already making an impact on the collections.
- Oopiri was released in considerably lower number of theaters, given that this is coming after Nag’s blockbuster Soggadde Chinni Nayana.
- In many centers, show timings were not ideal for telugu movie audience. For example, some centers had one afternoon show and one night show. In New Jersey for instance, there are no evening shows for Telugu version.In addition to having limited number of shows, some of the theaters have very low seat capacity, disappointing movie lovers.
- As soon a movie gets a hit talk, overseas exhibitors take care to immediately increase the number of shows. But in case of Oopiri this hasn’t happened so far and producers are leaving lot of money on the table.
- Private theater Chains, which form a key component of telugu movie overseas ecosystem were completely bypassed. When a movie gets good talk, private theater chains such as Moviemax Chicago, are nimble enough to add more shows. This is not easily possible with corporate chains.
This movie provides a case in point that overseas Telugu movie industry isn’t matured enough to be corporatized yet. A local distributor needs to nurture the movie to extract the maximum potential. As per hourly feeds coming in, Oopiri is grossing $90k on Friday 7 PM and might end up at 150-175k. As per reports Telugu360 is getting from local centers with proper planning and more theaters, Oopiri easily would have grossed 250k on Friday. Hope PVP pictures, a marquee production firm, addresses these issues immediately so that movie lovers are not left disappointed.
— Krishna (krishna@telugu360.com)
