Kerala Box-Office was eagerly looking for a rejuvenating Friday last week when Nivin Pauly-Asif Ali starrer Mahaveeryar and Fahadh Faasil’s Malayankunju hit the movies. It was Nivin Pauly’s big screen outing as a lead in 3 years and Fahadh’s big screen Malayalam outing in 2 years. After Prithviraj’s Kaduva proved to be relief for a struggling dry Kerala Box-office, these two films releasing simultaneously was a hopeful look-out.
But to the utter dismay of the distributors and theatre owners, both the films flopped at the box-office. While Mahaveeryar couldn’t even manage to clock solid initials, Malayankunju did pretty well in its first weekend. Unexpectedly for a genre like survival drama, the collections sounded really good. In what it seemed like a real resurrection of the box-office post Kaduva, the collections badly crashed on its first monday. Mahaveeryar received mixed reviews from audience and critics alike, while Malayankunju had extremely positive critical reception and first day audience appreciation by its side.
Box-office trackers took to twitter to express their disappointment in crashing box-office results of the Industry.
Apparently FEOUK, the theatre association of Kerala is the reason many films opted for a theatre release even with minimal box office expectations. According to reports, FEOUK decided to ban stars who would digitally release their films on streaming platforms. However, it seems like the decision of FEOUK has tampered themselves as most of the films are running losses. According to reports out of a sum total of 77 films released by the Industry so far this year, only 7 films managed to be successful ventures. Even a true blue commercial entertainer like ‘Kaduva’ only grossed 45 crores worldwide. A pre-pandemic era release would have clocked minimum 80 crore collection for the film.
If there’s one thing in certain, it is the fact that post-pandemic era movie business would not be the same. In Kerala, besides big ticket movies like RRR, KGF2 and Vikram, only minimal number of films have worked at the box-office. Audience would rather not pay to watch movies at the theatres when they know that the film would stream on OTT platforms sooner than ever. Only big ticket pot-boilers seems to interest movie going audience to invest their hard earned money. The drop in post pandemic movie business has hurt not only Bollywood, but also Kollywood, Tollywood and Mollywood.