Rajinikanth boldly admits box office failures of Lingaa, Kochadaiiyaan

In an industry where people hardly admit that their films have failed at the box office, Rajinikanth stands different from the herd as he has now accepted that two of his last three movies failed at collection centres.

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In a fans' meeting called by Rajinikanth at Raghavendra Mandapam, Kodambakkam, in Chennai, on Monday, the superstar claimed that Kochadaiiyaan and Lingaa failed to do good business, but Rajini added that his Kabali and Enthiran were commercial hits.

While producers were almost safe and did not incur losses, distributors of many regions lost money big time with Kochadaiiyaan and Lingaa.

Rajinikanth was also targeted in the past by distributors when his films failed to meet their expectations. A few years ago, a distributor of Lingaa went on to do a hunger strike demanding the superstar to pay compensation for the losses incurred by them.

Distributor Tirupur Subramanian had also alleged a few months ago that many distributors of Kabali suffered losses and the box office numbers were exaggerated. However, producer Kalaippuli S Thanu strongly opposed his views and claimed that Subramanian was spreading fake news after failing to get the theatrical rights of the Rajinikanth-starrer for a lower price.

The Root Cause

The theatrical rights of Rajinikanth's films are sold at exorbitant rates as distributors make a beeline to acquire it. Without studying market realities, the rights are acquired by distributors for fancy amounts. Hence, there are instances of people losing money.

Giving advice to producers and distributors, Rajinikanth at Neruppu Da audio launch had said last month, "Producers should just not think of their profits. They should also think of other stakeholders while selling a movie. And also distributors should not fall for the charms of a producer and buy theatrical rights of the film for an unreasonable price. They should follow due diligence before buying a film so that they don't suffer losses and cry foul."