Weekly Theatre Report (December 1, 2011)

Poraali is the only new release this week. Sasikumar and Samuthirakani's movie had a limited release without saturating the theatres. In the new distribution model with movies releasing at over ~750+ centers, the average healthy lifetime of wide release movies is now roughly 7 weeks or 35 days as proven by Mankatha, 7aum Arivu and Velayutham. Movies seem to lose gas by the time they get to 50 days these days.

For Poraali, Producer Sasikumar has placed all his bets on this one movie. Given the above average response from audience, the movie is not expected to have a spectacular run in the box office. In the coming weeks, we will know whether the movie will recover its investment.

Mayakkam Enna sustained the number of screens showing a healthy week-over-week drop despite the occupancy rates being on the lower side. It is expected that Osthe may eat into most of the screens.

7aum Arivu showed a noticeable drop this week and expected to have a couple of more weeks of life at the theatres. Surprisingly, 7aum Arivu is still resilient in most of the A centers, multiplexes and Bangalore theatres.

Velayudham dropped off the cliff this week showing the biggest drop since the release date. The collections are expected to come in trickles moving forward. After finally tallying up the final numbers, exhibitor sources have revealed that the gross collections fell short of Mankatha's overall profit, made worse by roughly 12 Crores getting diverted to Government instead of distributor/exhibitor pockets. Velayudham was also removed from all or most of the screens in Malaysia and Bangalore.