5 Takeaways from 1st Week BO for Maattrraan

Please note that the data provided above is only for first Week. For Maattrraan, it was from Oct 12 to Oct 18. Also, do not extrapolate this first week data to overall collection. Also, we haven't included our usual multiplex centers in Bangalore since Maattrraan did not release during the first week. Listed are some key takeaways by looking at the first week collections for Maattrraan

1. Premature to compare Suriya with Rajini's market pull

Many media reports claimed that Suriya is inching closer to Superstar Rajinikanth's remuneration of 30 Crores. Lingusamy also made that statement during the audio release function that Suriya is at arm's reach of Rajini's market size. The data shows that it is not true, yet. Not including Telugu market, Suriya is still in tight competition with Vijay and Ajith in Tamil market and comparing to Rajini's reach is premature.

2. Suriya Opening suffers due to Overexposure?

As one could see from the opening weekend collection, Maattrraan could not get houseful in pre-booking for the opening Friday, Saturday and Sunday. It is normal to witness Vijay and Ajith movies to get booked houseful in pre-booking. One of the reasons quoted within the industry for this not-so-stellar opening is because of Suriya's over exposure in TV game shows and innumerable advertisements, which may have reduced irresistible urge among fans to watch during the opening weekend. 

3. Thuppakki hijacks Maattrraan's Mind Share 

As per the basic tenets of marketing, Mind share leads to Wallet Share. Thuppakki's decision to release the music albums 2 days prior to Maattrraan's release date eroded people's mind share (i.e., movie buffs searched for music download sites, buying CDs, listening to songs and discussing opinions about Thuppakki songs in forums shattering the build-up for Maattrraan). Maattrraan took a back-seat which also seem to have impacted the opening weekend collections. Below is the Google Search volume for Thuppakki and Maattrraan which clearly shows Thuppakki hype towering Maattrraan.

4. Delays in Re-recording work

It is shocking to note that for such a major release, BGM/re-recording and sound mixing were not locked until 36 hours before the day of movie release. This is unheard of in the Tamil industry, especially for a movie involving big investments. Due to the last minute scramble, preview shows could not be held in many of the overseas prints (Malaysia, UK, US). The movie could not be released in Dubai during first week due to the same reason. Overseas prints could not add the sub-titles to the physical and digital prints further cutting down non-Tamil audience.

In future, Our directors and producers should stop using dummy background score for the purpose of censor certification.  Hope Thuppakki will not run into similar problems faced by Maattrraan and try to lock the final copy at least a week in advance.

5. Suriya needs an "Anti-fans Strategy"

Suriya and his Studio Green team needs to have an actionable strategy to deal with anti-fans. This is becoming a bigger challenge with sharp growth in social media and smart phones. For example a day before the movie release, the social media sites had hundreds of false reviews, mostly from Tamil Nadu where preview shows were not even held. More than 90% of these fake reviews were posted by anti-fans from dummy profiles in twitter and facebook.

Suriya movies starting Vaaranam Aayiram, 7aum Arivu and now Maattrraan have all been following the same trend. With Suriya's market going higher after every movie, this is a real threat for his growth and cannot continue to ignore this niche and highly powerful segment of anti-fans.

Bottomline: Based on the box office collections, it is clear that Maattrraan team choked during the last few days prior to release, similar to South African Cricket team. For the second and third weekend, the story takes a different turn. We will share the comparative BO performance of Maattrraan with respect to other movies during the 2nd weekend and festival week in the next few days.

Related Article - 7aum Arivu, Mankatha and Velayudham Full BO collections for Select Multiplexes