‘Sankranthi 2018’ is going to enter Tollywood’s record books for all wrong reasons! On the occasion of Sankranthi, four movies Power Star Pawan Kalyan &Trivikram Srinivas’s Agnyaathavaasi, Nandamuri Balakrishna & KS RaviKumar’s Jai Simha, Suriya & Keerthy Suresh’s Gang and Raj Tarun & Chitra Shukla starrer Rangula Raatnam were released.
Pawan, Keerthy Suresh and Anu Emmanuel’s Agnyaathavaasi has collected Rs 84+ crore at the worldwide box office in six days, whereas Balayya, Nayantara, Natasha Doshi and Hari Priya’s Jai Simha grossed Rs 27 Cr gross in four days.
Almost every year, the Sankranti releases have turned out to be either big hits or average-grossers, but none of them went on to incur losses for the distributors. However, 2018 witnessed the release two big-ticket films Agnyaathavaasi and Jai Simha and both failed to cash in on this festive-season sentiments.
Agnyaathavaasi is turning out disaster at the box office and it may incur 40% to 50% losses in full run. Jai Simha was also not able to break the record of Balayya’s previous offing Paisa Vasool on its opening day.
On the otherside, Rangula Raatnam and Gang got good openings and made decent collections the box office in the first weekend. Akkieneni Nagarjuna, the producer of Rangula Ratnam gave the movie for free of cost to those buyers who suffered losses for Hello starring Akkineni Akhil and Kalyani Priyandarshani. However, they are small in terms of the prices of their theatrical rights, and their success cannot be compared with the huge losses suffered by Tollywood.