The King of the 'ring'

A week ago, India's only other superstar, Rajnikanth's latest movie Chandramukhi crossed 100 days in theatres. Given that it has been three years since we've had a movie from him (and five since his last hit), there was so much anticipation. If you don't care about logic and don't belong to the finicky types (of which I am one) who will selectively espouse the concept of good cinema etc, the movie is quite an entertainer. It has done enough business to make everyone happy - and that's more important than anything else.

There was this mini-scam floating around in the mail today. Someone had the audacity to claim that Chandramukhi was the 30th top-grossing movie of all time ... worldwide! The originator of this fantasy (who thankfully remains unknown as yet) had a simple modus operandi. He visited The Internet Movie Database and got the list of all-time top grossers, then shifted Mission Impossible II (which was the 30th) one place down, and inserted Chandramukhi in its place - mission accomplished!

He had also quoted the collections - right to the last dollar! Thankfully 545 million dollars works out to around 2600 crores of rupees, and because even the bluest of India's blue chip companies don't make that kinda profits in one quarter, a major scam was averted.

In any case, here's a partial list of the movie's (real) achievements. The long and the short of this is that if you want to hear the cash registers ring, then thalaivar is the king!

1. First movie to complete 100 days in Mayajaal.
2. Doing a business of 100 crores.
3. First movie to be dubbed in Zulu (Lance Klusener's mother tongue) and Afrikaans (South Africa's main language)
4. Doing very well in Kerala, a place from where Chandramukhi's knot is taken from the movie Manichitrathazhu, and dislodged Mohanlal's latest movie.
5. Doing very well in Andhra and going to complete 100 days in 10 theaters. Many big Telugu movies including Chiranjeevi's movie was released along with Chandramukhi. But all bite the dust except Chandramukhi.
6. Generally in US, Indian movies will be screened for 2 weeks that too only one show during weekdays and 4 shows during weekends. But Chandramukhi (CM) was screened for 5 weeks with 5 shows a day.
7. Rajni's salary for this movie is 10 crores and thus making him as the highest paid actor in India again.
8. Abirami theater alone will get 1 crore.
9. Vetri theatre in Chrompet, a suburb of Chennai, which is said to have paid Rs 20 Lakhs Minimum Guarantee, and according to trade sources the theatre recovered the amount in five days and thereby created a new record. The rumor mill has it that Vetri theatre had collected Rs 7,62,000 gross on the first day making it "unofficially" the highest collection from a single screen for a day in India! Remember, this can happen only with a Rajnikanth film! He is the only superstar after the late MGR who can entice an ordinary movie going public to part with their hard earned money for three hours of pure fantasy.
10. After Baba debacle, he silenced all his detractors inside and outside film industry through CM.
11. Surely Industry will have lucrative year just because of CM as there is no big budget movie in the next 7 months (There is no chance of any big debacle this year). This happened 7 years before on 1998 when 'Padayappa' was release. That is why Tamil Film Industry is considered as one man industry.
12. Overseas rights will be sold for 5 crores for SRK's movie while for Rajni it went up to 22 crores.
13. But the biggest achievement of CM is bringing family audiences, female audience who were glued to their TV sets watching 'Metti Oli' and children to the theaters.