"Sarainodu" and "Brahmotsavam" are incurring huge losses to their international distributor Classics Entertainments, which is likely to lose over 35 percent of its investments on these movies.
Classics Entertainments is one of the leading overseas distribution houses that release Indian movies in International markets. This house has distributed several big ticket South Indian movies in foreign countries and tasted success and "Srimanthudu" and "S/o Sathyamurthy" are among the list of bigger movies for the house.
The overseas distribution rights of Allu Arjun's last outing "S/o Sathyamurthy" were sold to Classics Entertainments for a whopping price of Rs 6 crore. The movie earned Rs 5.95 crore (Rs 9.50 crore gross) for the distribution house. Though this film was not a big success, the distributor went on to shell out Rs 6.20 crore for the rights of Bunny's latest outing "Sarainodu."
Despite getting decent opening, "Sarainodu" could not fare well at the ticket counters in the international markets. The Allu Arjun starrer has earned Rs. 3.72 crore (Rs 7.35 crore gross) for the distributors in five weeks, according to the reports. As per its current pace of collection, its life time earnings will not cross Rs 4 crore. The film, which has been big hit in India, has become big disaster in the international market.
The distribution house shelled out Rs. 6 crore on the overseas theatrical rights of "Srimanthudu." The Mahesh Babu starrer reportedly earned Rs 14.79 crore (Rs 23.05 crore gross) for the distributors in its life time. Its huge success almost doubled up the price of the international theatrical rights of "Brahmotsavam". Classics Entertainments reportedly paid Rs 13.20 crore for its rights.
"Brahmotsavam" made superb collection in premiere shows on Thursday night, but its business was affected by the negative word of mouth on the following days. The movie has earned Rs. 5.12 crore (Rs. 9.13 crore gross) for the distributor in its opening weekend, according to reports. Considering its current pace, the film is likely to fetch less than Rs. 2 crore for the distributor in the coming days.
Classics Entertainments has paid a total of Rs 19.40 crore for the theatrical rights of "Sarainodu" and "Brahmotsavam." But these summer releases have earned Rs 8.84 crore together for the distributor. Even if they add up another Rs 2 crore together, their earning would reach Rs 10.84 crore. The distribution house is likely to suffer a loss of Rs 8.56 crore, which is a little lesser than 50 percent of their investment on the movies.
It is not clear on whether the producers of "Sarainodu" and "Brahmotsavam" would compensate for this huge loss or not. However, the poor performance of "Brahmotsavam" had fuelled the speculation about the bad planning of its release in the international market.
The bosses of Classics Entertainments took to its Twitter handle on May 22 to slam the reports about the bad planning. Meanwhile, they promised they would continue to bring more films of Mahesh Babu to the international markets. They tweeted, "Any How This is not end of world. We hope to bring many more Blockbusters of @urstrulyMahesh to Overseas in future (sic)."
