They want to invest huge amount of money. Earning of 26-27 crores on the first day. This number… yes, the number, not the collection, has increased to Rs. May be more than. 30 crore nett, depending on whether they are pumped in more later in the day or not. The pre-sale of the film was massive after midnight yesterday, with a series going from around 95K tickets to 175K by the morning. It will be known only tomorrow morning as to how many numbers the makers prepare the food. It would not be a surprise if they reach Rs. 40 crores nett, because why not?

If the film had delivered these numbers organically, it would have been a very good start, in fact, for all genre limitations, it would have been an excellent start. But now…nothing meaningful can be said or analyzed about this, because this madness makes no sense. There was some feeding of the film in pre-sales when sales began, but after that, they were largely left to fend for themselves. That changed last night when the producers raised the bar.

Before pre-sales turned into a joke, the film looked like it was going to make around Rs. Earned 15 crores on the first day. This is probably the closest estimate of its actual, organic audience appeal. There’s no way to confirm this, but at least it provides a baseline to work from.

As a box office reporter, this is a difficult and frustrating situation, because you want to report the box office and you have to report the numbers that are there on paper, even if you know they don’t mean anything. It is unclear if and for how long the makers plan to continue this. Their reasoning for doing so is to create the impression that a film is doing well. Remembering a time when reporting inflated box office figures in the media was a way of creating perception, the actual figures were to be seen in the billing. Now the billing itself has been inflated/compromised, so there is no way of knowing the actual number.