The Ganesh Chaturthi/ Vinayaka Chavithi weekend is shaping up to be an enormous Blockbuster feast. This festive weekend is stacked up with hugely anticipated releases, both digitally as well as in theatres. Due to the uncertainty surrounding the theatrical medium though, most filmmakers were not willing to risk the fate of their films and have instead opted for a digital release, the biggest ones among them being Saif Ali Khan-Arjun Kapoor starrer ‘Bhoot Police’ on Disney+Hotstar, Nani’s ‘Tuck Jagadish’, on Amazon Prime Video and Vijay Sethupathi’s ‘Tughlaq Durbar’ releasing on Netflix on the 10th of September. As far as theatrical releases are concerned, the ones making the most noise are Kangana Ranaut’s ‘Thalaivii’, Vijay Sethupathi’s ‘Laabam’ and Gopichand’s ‘Seetimaarr’.
With trade analysts predicting and picking their favourites, we thought of doing a comparative analysis for some of the most anticipated Indian movies releasing on the occasion of Ganesh Chaturthi. The question is, how does one precisely quantify the buzz surrounding a film just before its release? One way is to observe the total number of views for the film’s official trailer released on YouTube. The other parameters could be the number of tweets featuring the film’s hashtag or the number of likes (or dislikes) for the film’s trailer. However, since we can consider just one, we have taken into account the total number of trailer views (at the time of writing the article), to compile a list of the top six most anticipated Indian movies slated to release on the occasion of Ganesh Chaturthi. They are listed in descending order as below-
1. Thalaivii
Medium: In Theatres
Running Span- 5 months
Total Number of Trailer Views: 21.7 Million
Total Number of Trailer Likes: 752 K
Medium: OTT (Amazon Prime Video)
Running Span- 1 week
Total Number of Trailer Views: 16.5 Million
Total Number of Trailer Likes: 219 K
3. Laabam
Medium: In Theatres
Running Span- 1 year
Total Number of Trailer Views: 14.7 Million
Total Number of Trailer Likes: 324 K
4. Bhoot Police
Medium: OTT (Disney+Hotstar)
Running Span- 3 weeks
Total Number of Trailer Views: 12.5 Million
Total Number of Trailer Likes: 233 K
5. Seetimaarr
Medium: In Theatres
Running Span- 1 week
Total Number of Trailer Views: 10.5 Million
Total Number of Trailer Likes: 212 K
Medium: TV & OTT (SunTV & Netflix)
Running Span- 1 week
Total Number of Trailer Views: 3.2 Million
Total Number of Trailer Likes: 115 K
So, as we can see from the data above, Kangana Ranaut starrer ‘Thalaivii’, the upcoming biopic on late actress-turned-politician Jayalalithaa is the clear winner, with Nani’s ‘Tuck Jagadish’ and Vijay Sethupathi’s ‘Laabam’ coming in 2nd and 3rd place, respectively. Having said that, it is note-worthy that while the trailer of ‘Thalaivii’ released 5 months ago and that of ‘Laabam’ was released a year ago, ‘Tuck Jagadish’ has managed to garner a huge number of views within a week of the trailer’s release!
Another big takeaway from this analysis is the fact that theatres may still have a good chance at a revival if multiplexes sort out their issues and agree to screen the Hindi version of ‘Thalaivii’, despite the two-week theatrical window, post which the movie will stream on Netflix and Amazon Prime Video. As far as the OTT platforms go, it looks like Amazon Prime Video may be ruling the roost now, followed by Disney+Hotstar and Netflix, at third place.
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