Mahesh Babu's Maharshi has made below expected collection at the overseas box office in the third weekend. As per its 18-day earnings, the movie will incur some amount of losses to its distributors.
Maharshi was released in over 500 locations across the USA and other international markets. The movie opened to a good start and fared well at the overseas box office in the first weekend. But its business dropped considerably on the weekdays. The shocked distributors reduced its ticket prices in the second week, but it did not help the film to get an increase in its overall numbers.
The Vamshi Paidipally-directed film has shown a further drop in its numbers in its third week. Maharshi has collected approximately $66,000 at the US box office in its third week, taking its 18-day total to $1.856 Million in the country. Its day-wise breakup is $15,000 on Friday, $24,000 on Saturday and $27,000 on Sunday. However, the movie has fetched negligible numbers in other international markets.
Maharshi has collected approximately a total of around Rs 25 crore gross at the overseas box office in 18 days. The movie is estimated to have earned Rs 12.50 crore for distributors, who have reportedly shelled out Rs 14 crore on its international theatrical rights. Considering its current pace of collection, the movie will not be able to return the remaining amount of investments to its distributors.
Mahesh Babu is undoubtedly the most popular Telugu actor in the international market, especially in the USA. The producers of his recent movies quoted high prices for their overseas theatrical rights, but those films have failed to recover the distributors' investment. They ended up incurring huge loss to them.
Producer Dil Raju had also quoted a very high price for the overseas rights of Maharshi, but none came forward to acquire its rights. Finally, he reportedly struck the deal with Great Indian Films, which earlier distributed big ticket films like Baahubali 2 and Bharat Ane Nenu. Unfortunately, this distributor had also suffered some amount of losses from Mahesh Babu's previous outing Bharat Ane Nenu
But Dil Raju had reportedly agreed to share the loss or profit 50:50 with the bosses of Great Indian Films. Maharshi is now likely to incur a loss of around Rs 1.50 crore. As per his agreement, the producer has to bear the loss of Rs 75 lakh. It should be seen whether he would pay this loss to the distributor or not.
