In an interview with CNBC-TV18’s Latha Venkatesh and Reema Tendulkar, Kamal Gianchandani, President of PVR Pictures spoke about sales exceeding company’s expectations backed by pre-festivities and Diwali cheer.
Below is the verbatim transcript of the interview:
Q: Can you tell us about how has the occupancy panned out pre-festive season as well as performance of new releases along with the latest release Happy New Year?
A: Well, the pre-festive season and I will go back to the Dussehra holidays has been extremely encouraging. I would say that the expectations that we had with the festivals have been met with and in case of Diwali those expectations have been exceeded.
For Dussehra, we had Bang Bang and Haider competing with each other for patrons and for mindshare of audiences, as we were expecting an ideal situation where both films co-existed and flourished at the box office and that is exactly what happened. Bang Bang turned out to be a big commercial success and Haider turned out to be great counter programming initiative where it attracted absolutely different set of audiences.
Quite honestly, the week before Diwali, so Dussehra last for 2 weeks, the sort of impact for these two pictures lasted for about 2 weeks, then we got into the pre-Diwali week which traditionally has been the weak period. It was as per expectations this year as well.
With Diwali, we had Happy New Year which had Shah Rukh and Farah coming after two successful films- Main Hoon Na and Om Shanti Om. Red Chillies is producing it and solo release on Diwali, Diwalli day as the release date. Shah Rukh Khan has had traditionally a very strong relationship and this year was no exception. Happy New Year has turned out to be a bonanza at Diwali for both patrons and exhibitors. The film is a blockbuster. Even Monday, which is a weekday after a humungous start at Friday, Saturday, Sunday, the film is sustaining really well. Occupancy at some cinemas is as high as 70-75 percent, which is exceptionally high for weekdays. Therefore, we are extremely satisfied; I would go to the extent to say that this Diwali has exceeded our expectations.
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