Rajinikanth slashes remuneration after Sun Pictures threatens to shelve Thalaivar 168 following Darbar fallout?

Rajinikanth has reportedly agreed for a cut in his remuneration for his upcoming movie Thalaivar 168 after his previous flick Darbar failed to set the box office on fire. The latest rumours indicate that Sun Pictures had threatened to drop the movie if the actor refused to reduce the remuneration by half.

Sun Pictures Cuts Rajinikanth's Remuneration by Half
The series of Savukku Shankar of savukkuonline website claims that Rajinikanth was supposed to get Rs 118 crore to act in Thalaivar 168, but Sun Pictures has now agreed to pay only Rs 58 crore owing to the "alleged" poor performance of Darbar.

The tweets claim that Dayanidhi Maran had met Rajinikanth on the sets of Thalaivar 168 and asked the Tamil superstar to reduce his salary. The 69-year old actor was reluctant for the pay cut, but agreed only after the former union minister stated that they would drop the project mid-way to reduce the future losses.

The unedited series of tweets can be read below:

Sources : Darbar fall out. Super Star Rajinikanth's salary halved. Rajinikanth is now acting in a Sun Pictures production after Darbar. His salary was fixed at 118 crores (all in white) which was agreed to by Sun Pictures.

Due to the heavy loss suffered by distributors of Darbar, senior Maran had second thoughts and visited Rajinikanth in the first schedule shooting spot of his ongoing venture day before yesterday.

Rajinikanth who was initially reluctant to reduce his salary into half was taken aback, when he was told that Sun Pictures was ready to abandon the project to cut losses. Darbar loss has had a cascading effect on Rajinikanth's brand value.

Sensing that halving the salary would be better than dropping the entire project, which would finish his career, Rajinikanth has agreed to the final offer of 58 crores (Including GST) by Sun Pictures today, say sources.

Rajinikanth's Darbar had opened up to a good start and performed well in a couple of centres. In Tamil Nadu, the film did not face any competition and had a good footfalls. However, as the days progressed, the rumours of the film failing to do well at the box office started surfacing online.

Interestingly, Darbar has done reasonably well in the centres where there is transparency in box office tracking. Notably in the overseas centres and in Chennai, the collections are not as bad as it is being made out.

As a result, a section of industry insiders say that Rajinikanth is being unfairly targeted by his opponents fearing his political entry.