Opinion: Release date is the key to box office success

Pongal festival came on Thursday (Jan 14), which gave four days of holidays for films like Rajini Murugan, Tharai Thappattai and Kath akali to open well. Almost a solo release for Theri on a Thursday (April 14) helped the film to earn a huge opening week collection. Ramzan festival release of Dhillukku Thuttu (Thursday, July 7) also fetched good opening as it had four days of weekend. Another solo release on a Thursday last month (September 8), Iru Mugan also became a big commercial success. Though these films had mixed reviews to at best ‘paisa vasool entertainer’ or ‘a film for the fans of the artiste’ comments from critics to audience, yet all these films have become commercially successful mainly due to the release date, which gave them an edge at box office. 

Whether the film gets a great review or not, if the release date is good especially for a popular artiste based film, the opening weekend collection is guaranteed as we had seen with the success of many films in the past. Ensuring the right release date is the key. This is successfully ensured by Hindi cinema by fixing the release date almost one year in advance and announcing it. In fact, in several cases, the release date was announced, once the lead hero confirmed the project itself. Such is their great planning and working backwards to meet the release date dead line. Tamil cinema is not able to achieve such meticulous planning due to various issues especially with most technicians, who keep changing their deadlines for delivery of their part of the responsibility and artistes committing to too many projects and shuffling dates, which leads to changing of release dates quite often. 

Under this situation, 24 AM Studios has done a good job of announcing the release date two months in advance for Remo and sticking to that date by working backwards with all technicians and ensuring the release of the film on October 7th. Two more examples of meticulous planning in commencing and releasing the film we had seen in the recent past is with Vijay Sethupathi’s films. His films Sethupathi and Rekka were completed within 6 months of commencement and got ready for release in no time. This kind of excellent planning and execution not only saves lakhs of rupees in interest cost to the producer, but also keeps the interest alive on the film among audience, as from the date of announcement of the project, the film is in focus and when it gets released, within a  short period, before the audience forget about the film, it helps tremendously in getting a good opening for the film. 

Both producers and filmmakers of popular artiste films must work together to fix the release date while commencing the project, which must be ideally a holiday and work backwards to meet that deadline. Every team member must be aware of the consequences of any delay and there must be a Plan B to meet the deadline. One cannot be sure of getting a solo release amidst so many films being made, but at least ensuring a festival day or a holiday release date is achievable if there is good planning. Cinema comprises of 2 C’s - Creativity and Commerce. Both must be under the focus of the team. Even if one is compromised, the  final result will be negative for the film. 

October 7 2016 is a very good release date as October 10 and 11 are holidays due to festivals. This gives a clear five day weekend to the three films Remo, Rekka and Devi releasing this week. This kind of business opportunity is available once in a while and surely is going to benefit these three films at the box office with huge collections. 

Producers and filmmakers must work towards converting the release date as an opportunity to achieve box office success in addition to offering a good content.