Shaji Nadesan responds to allegations against The Great Father collections

Megastar Mammootty’s latest release The Great Father is the current talk in social medias. There is a lot of hue and cry in these platforms over the box office figures of the movie.

Producers of the film, August Cinemas had announced that the movie had grossed Rs 4.31 crores from the first day, thus becoming the highest first day grosser in Kerala and Mollywood.

The record for highest first day grosser in Kerala was previously held Rajinikanth’s Kabali. Mohanlal’s Pulimurugan held the record for the initial day collections for a Malayalam movie.

Mammootty in his Facebook page had also written that the movie had grossed Rs 20 crores from the all over India collections in four days time, thus becoming the fastest Malayalam movie to do so.

However, Mohanlal fans were skeptical about the authenticity of these figures. They did some groundwork to track the show counts and the approximate figures. Apparently, their findings were way lesser than the figures claimed by August Cinemas. Mohanlal fans have lent out an open challenge to producers Prithviraj Sukumaran and Shaji Nadesan to prove the authenticity of the collections.

Shaji Nadesan responded to all the allegations in an exclusive chat with Onlookers Media.

He said, “We can’t keep answering to all these allegations. I have many friends and well wishers in Mohanlal fans association. I haven’t associated myself with any of the stars’ associations. I am with Prithviraj in the production business. We never intended to make a movie to surpass Pulimurugan and it’s records. Ours is a very small movie made on a modest budget of Rs 7 crores.

“There was a gap of nearly six months before Mammookka’s last release. So that was one of the major reasons behind such huge a big hype and obviously the collections thereafter. Also Mammookka didn’t have a genuinely good movie and when that happened, fans and general audience lapped it up and that is evident from the rush in theatres.”

“The Great Father had 101 fans show apart from four regular shows in all the 202 release centres. The noon and matinee shows were quite dull but surpassing our expectations, it again picked up with the second shows. Due to the huge rush third show, starting at 12 AM, were arranged in 51 centres. We took these 202 centres for the first two days. Around 60 of them were charted for Dileep’s Georgettan’s Pooram and 10-15 for Mohanlal’s 1971 Beyond Borders.”

“The next day (March 31) due to the motor vehicle strike, the morning shows were dull. People were hesitant to come out due to the hartal but picked up from the matinee shows with the same flow.

Such huge collections were possible only because of the rush in theatres. One thing to remember is these box office records are meant to be broken, it is not eternal and are should not be clogged with just one movie. There is no reason being so intolerant. Another movie will outperform this record and that is how it works.”

So, that pretty much explains what the makers had to say about the allegations. Let’s hope that the dust settles down pretty soon and the fans continue to support good movies irrespective of the ‘star’ presence.