Premam, Is It A Hit?

‘Premam,’ the direct Telugu remake to Malayalam cult flick with the same title is released two weeks back across the globe. Definitely, Naga Chaitanya made a profuse mark of his own by showing enough maturity in three characters with diverse shades. Nevertheless, media fulfilled its part by promoting ‘Premam’ as a good film, somewhere on par with the original.

The Chandoo Mondeti directorial stood as alone Dasara festive winner dumping all other opposition releases. This made trade circles to speculate huge numbers to pile up at Box Office in coming days. Unfortunately, by the end of 10 days run share revenues in AP and TS stood at mere 14.5 Crores while the movie is yet to breach 1 Million in the USA.

With a literally zero opposition, holiday season and positive word of mouth talk spread; why ‘Premam’ is still faring just like an above average film rather than a hit? What would have been the situation if it is released during working days and amidst stiff competition? Given the budget and subsequent pre release business equations, ‘Premam’ should have crossed Rs.25 Crores milestone by now. 

Agreed that Chaitu isn’t a smashing opener but there were dense chances for film to pick up later on from second or third day. And beyond all these, ‘Premam’ is aggressively promoted in all the available media formats. ‘Premam’ can be rated as merely a helpful film to Chaitu’s career but not a hit in terms of trade relative to Box Office benchmarks set by other medium range heroes.