The poor performance of Ilayathalapathy Vijay starrer "Puli" at the box office is haunting its producer PT Selvakumar even after its release five months ago. In fact, it is now affecting his next movie "Pokkiri Raja," starring Jeeva.
In a latest development, distributors are refusing to screen PT SelvaKumar's next film "Pokkiri Raja" as the loss incurred by them after "Puli" bombed at the box office is huge, reports Sify. They are demanding compensation for the earlier losses and have taken a stand to boycott "Pokkiri Raja" until the producer meets their demands.
In a bid to solve the issue, the producer called for a meeting with the distributors Tuesday, Feb.23. "Meeting arranged tomorrow between all TN #Puli distributors and the producer for mutually solving the red card against #PokkiriRaja release," confirmed journalist Sreedhar Pillai on Twitter.
The Tamil Nadu theatrical rights of "Puli" was sold to multiple parties. Thenendal Films, Cosmo and many others paid huge amount for the distribution rights of different areas and as per Andhra Box Office, the makers had earned Rs 39 crore by selling these rights.
However, "Puli" opened to negative reviews and failed to perform well at the box office. In fact, in many centres the Tamil film disappeared from theatres without a trace, which badly affected the distributors and producers.
"Puli" was made on a budget of over Rs 100 crore and minted Rs 98.5 crore from pre-business from the Tamil and Telugu versions.
The Tamil film was released in October 2015. Apart from Vijay, Kannada superstar Sudeep, Shruti Haasan, Hansika Motwani and yesteryear actress Sridevi Kapoor were a part of "Puli." It was directed by Chimbu Deven and jointly produced by Shibu Thameens and PT Selvakumar.
"Pokkiri Raja" is set for a March 4 release. Jeeva, Hansika Motwani and Sibiraj are in the lead roles in the movie, which is written and directed by Ramprakash Rayappa.
[1 lakh = 100,000 | 1 crore = 10 million | 100 crore = 1 billion]