The Greatest of All Times (GOAT), starring Thalapathy Vijay and directed by Venkat Prabhu, was released last Thursday, September 5. The movie had a huge opening, owing to the great buzz that was created around it added with the star power of Thalapathy. The movie made a worldwide collection of over 60 crores on the first day. The movie received a lot of criticism from the critics and the viewers who saw the movie. The question is how this criticism affected the reception of the movie?
The movie was released on September 5 worldwide; it already had quite a buzz around it. First of all, it was announced that the film is going to be one of the last projects of Vijay before his retirement to pursue politics. Then, the huge budget for the movie and the action-packed trailer really intrigued the audience. As a result, the movie broke the record this year for most advance ticket bookings. Its first day collections were his career best after that of Leo. The movie made more than a million-dollar business in North America alone on the first day.
The movie, though, was not appreciated by the audience as the makers had expected. The film started with a hype that broke records for most advance ticket bookings this year, and shows in Hyderabad starting at 4 in the morning, but slowly all the buzz was worn off. People bashed the movie for its bad story and screenplay, bad direction, background score and even the cast did not perform up to the mark. The biggest disappointment was Vijay’s choice of this film in the summit of his career where he is expected to cross the boundaries of comfort to deliver great content. His last film Leo became a huge success and hailed as the highest grosser in Vijay’s filmography, but GOAT fails to even touch the sky it created.
On the first day the film made it huge, making over 44 crores in India. The second day (Friday) though became a disappointment as it observed a 42% drop in the viewership. For a movie that has such a huge hype around it, this much drop, in just the second day, is really concerning. The next day, being Saturday (holiday), received an increased attention as people must have used their holiday to watch the movie. The movie earned an earning of 33.5 crores on the day. This was an increase of 31% from the previous day. The next day though, was the worst of the four, receiving about 15 crores after the evening shows.
Supposedly, the scathing criticism of the movie and the bad reception of the movie by the audience made the situation bad for the movie. The criticism prevented the new audience from watching the movie and the people. Most of the people who had already watched the film were not at all interested in watching it again.
As of now, the film is the fifth biggest grosser of the year, but still it did not reach the heights it was expected to achieve. It is still way far from becoming a hit.