This Diwali saw the clash of two major A listers at the box office. Aamir Khan's Secret Superstar and Ajay Devgn's Golmaal Again hit the theatres on the auspicious occasion to cash in on the festival holidays. While Secret Superstar is comparatively made at a smaller budget than Rohit Shetty's Golmaal Again, both the films have got a 50:50 ratio of screens at the multiplexes.
Going in with the mood of the festival, the prospects of majority of the crowd flocking in to watch Golmaal Again are more, but the distribution of screens at the multiplexes has left a major chunk of the viewers disappointed. Why do we say so? Well, since both the films have got a 50-50 deal at the plexes, the siows of Golmaal Again are getting sold out (read houseful) pretty quickly while those of Secret Superstar are barely getting a good occupancy, despite having an equal number of screens.
Rationally, Golmaal Again should have got more number of screens at the multiplexes since it's a bigger film in comparison to Secret Superstar. Word has it that Aamir has been arm twisting and blackmailing the multiplex chains that if 50% of the screens aren't allotted to Secret Superstar, he won't let any of his other major films (the next one being Thugs of Hindostan with Amitabh Bachchan) screen there.
Though, clearly this isn't helping Secret Superstar since its shows are running at low occupancy in the multiplexes whereas on the other hand, Golmaal Again is mostly running houseful in single screens as well as multiplexes. People are not getting tickets to watch the Rohit Shetty film as there aren't enough screens for it. Hence Golmaal Again being a bigger film needed more screens but apparently, because of Aamir the film didn't get those few extra ones.
This situation is particularly sad because it won't affect the collections of Secret Superstar much but it will definitely reduce the collections of Golmaal Again. This is a time when the industry needs synergy and eventually if a film like Golmaal Again works well at the ticket windows, it would help the industry only.
But uff yeh number game. Sigh!
