The Salman Khan craze was going strong after "Sultan," but it now seems to have taken a hit from Rajinikanth and his upcoming film "Kabali," which is already hitting the headlines for various reasons. The latest is a number of companies not only declaring a holiday on Friday, when "Kabali" releases, but also providing its employees tickets to watch the film! This has led to online jokes that say: "Salman releases his films on a holiday. But when Rajinikanth releases a film, the day becomes a holiday!"
Employees of companies such as Fyndus and Mslive in Chennai and Opus in Bangalore — now Bengaluru — have not only declared Friday, July 22, a day off, but have also provided their employees tickets to see the film, something that must go down really well with them and act as a huge morale booster.
Rajasekaran, a business development executive at Fyndus, told International Business Times India, that the company — which has developed a mobile app — is giving free tickets to not only its employees but also users of the app. The company has declared Friday a holiday "in efforts to avoid piled up leave requests to the HR department," thereby taking away one headache from Human Resources.
Rajasekaran said the notice came last Saturday. "Besides the holiday, we are giving away 32 tickets to all our employees, and 200 tickets to winners of the 'Kabali' contest, which we are running for users of our app," he told IBTimes India.
Mslive, another Chennai-based firm, has declared Friday a holiday for similar reasons. Company CEO Sundaram told IBTimes India everyone in the firm was a Rajinikanth fan, and hence it was decided to not work on the holiday. The company has also given out around 60 tickets to its employees to go watch the film.
The Rajini-mania, it seems, is not limited to Tamil Nadu! A firm in Bangalore named Opus has also declared it will be shut on Friday. And they are giving free tickets for "Kabali" not only to their employees but members of their families as well!
Meanwhile, "Kabali" has apparently done good business even before its release, and things are only going to get better, according to predictions. Given the advance booking figures, the film is expected to beat the opening-day records of big films not only in India but abroad as well, and especially in the U.S. It is also expected to do great overall, with some predicting that it will collect 10 times more than "Sultan."
