Mersal loss controversy: What's the truth?

A few industry personnel including Suresh Kamatchi, S.V.Shekhar and Praveen Gandhi have been creating a furore over the past few days by claiming that Mersal has caused very huge losses to the producers, Sri Thenandal Films. Their claims appear baseless as they seem to be speaking without any proof and with a deliberate motive to put down the film and the star in question. While Vijay fans have been upset by these comments, rival fans' groups have been trolling Mersal, calling it a hyped-up success story.

Producer and prominent industry spokesperson, Dhananjayan opened up on this and was quite forthright in his Tweets,   

"Shocked to read such exaggerated statements that Mersal incurred huge loss. Looks like a motivated campaign. When the Producer is not talking about it, how come others are quoting such figures? On what basis? My calculation is it's a profitable film. Truth may be out soon. My view is Mersal has earned the biggest share to all distributors, exhibitors, theatre owners, vendors & everyone involved. So, it can't be a loss to the Producer. Let the Producer declare the numbers. Others should stop speculating & quote illogical numbers as loss."

 

He has summed it up pretty well and prominent industry trackers have also supported his view points and been Tweeting along similar lines.

As we've been regularly reporting, Mersal has emerged as the all-time No.2 grosser in Tamil Nadu, behind only Baahubali 2. It is a unanimously profitable venture for all theater owners & distributors associated. The all-time share records in quite a few territories & non-Baahubali 2 records in the remaining territories, fittingly sum up its run! It is just 7 days from the 50 days milestone and Vijay fans are making elaborate plans to celebrate this occasion at prominent centers across Tamil Nadu. The producers also seem to be a happy lot and Hema Rukmani has come out in quite a few interviews to talk about their grand success story with Mersal.

As Dhananjayan says, we also hope that Sri Thenandal Films will come out with an official statement on the film's collections to put an end to this, once and for all. Such an official declaration will also set a good precedent for other films to follow.