Vivek Agnihotri’s The Kashmir Files, a Hindi film centred on the exodus of Kashmiri Pandits from the Valley after being hounded by terrorists in the 1990s, has crossed the ₹100 crore-mark. The film, which is being dubbed as a sleeper hit, has attracted a lot of attention because of its controversial subject.
Many BJP-ruled states have declared the movie tax-free, with even Prime Minister Narendra Modi backing the film. Many private companies have also given free tickets to employees to watch the movie, and some state governments have given holidays to employees to watch the film.
With all this hype surrounding the film, it is now raking in the moolah at the box-office within a week of its release. Out of this overall box-office collection, which grew by 80 per cent in just five days, 49 per cent went to movie booking site BookMyShow in the opening weekend, said a business daily report. BookMYShow sold over 4 million tickets by the end of the first week.
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Ashish Saksena, chief operating officer, Cinemas, BookMyShow told Economic Times that the film started out with decent advance sales for the first day. But the audience grew at an unimaginable pace after day one, and went up “significantly” at the end of the first day on Friday itself, he pointed out.
This unprecedented success has prompted more cinema theatres across the country to add shows and screens. There has been a 7x growth in the number of screens showing the film. News reports said that cities like Mumbai, Delhi-NCR, Bengaluru, Pune, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad, Kolkata, Lucknow, Surat and Vadodara were the first to throng theatres to catch the film.
It has reportedly brought the entire entertainment industry, which was severely affected in the pandemic, to life. Meanwhile, INOX has already sold more than 1.5 million tickets, the highest number of tickets sold by any cinema chain in the country.
Alok Tandon, CEO, INOX Leisure told ET that the movie’s performance has created a “huge platform” for the industry and it has overcome existing concerns about Covid-19, the challenges from OTT, or about the future of the industry. PVR Pictures too also witnessed 90 per cent occupancy rates in the first weekend of release. The movie raced ahead of all other films currently playing at cinema theatres.
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