Even as "Baahubali - the Beginning" (Bahubali) – released on 10 July – successfully completes 50 on Friday at the worldwide box office, director SS Rajamouli says the trend of 50, 100, 175 day run is old fashion.
The movie has collected about Rs 595 crore gross at the worldwide box office in seven weeks. Besides shattering many old records, the Prabhas starrer has become the third all-time Indian movie grosser in the global market.
SS Rajamouli, who has impressed the audience across the globe with his master story-telling, is very happy that "Baahubali - the Beginning" has done superb business. But he is against the idea of running the movie for 100 or 175 days for the sake of creating records.
A day before "Baahubali - the Beginning" completed 50 days, SS Rajamouli took to his Twitter handle to express his views. In a series of tweets, the director said he will withdraw his film from the theatres, if it fails to do well at the ticket counters. Here is the lengthy Twitter post:
Record number of 50 days, 100 days,175 days are things of past. Today, Films are being released in 1000′s of screens and run is over by 3-4 weeks. Few main screens might still give shares, but mostly the run is over. It is very sad when some fans ask for an extension, sometimes paying out of their pockets and sometimes asking the exhibitors to do so. Friends..! what do we gain out of these false records?? Audience have given us a memorable victory that we will remember for the rest of our lives. What more do we need? Our industry is plagued by this issue for a long time. Let's not be a part of it. It is high time we stopped this. Bahubali will run in theatres that are yielding shares. If not, it will make way for other new films to follow. We will NOT block theatres for false records.
"Baahubali - the Beginning" will be screened at the Busan International Film Festival and SS Rajamouli will be present on the occasion. On 28 August, the director tweeted: "Baahubali will be screening at Busan international film festival on oct4th, 7th and 9th. I'll Be attending on 4th."
