The activity at the box-office last week was muted with Mausam sharply going down and six films released last week showing little action. Initial trade information shows that out of the six films that were released Force seemed to have done better than the others. The FTI of these six films ranged between 5 and 15. Forecasting the first week’s collection of the films in this range of FTI tend to be a problem because they bunch around a narrow first week range collection of Rs 3-10 crore but the number of screens that the movies command makes a substantial difference to their final box-office collection figures. It is impossible to improve the predictability of the films in this range even with larger sample sizes. There is much more to learn about these movies from FilmTest and PromoCheck.
The results of a FilmTest can be used very effectively to improve the collections atleast by 10-15 per cent and this may be the margin that will move the film from red to black. Tests like FilmTest and PromoCheck should become part and parcel of any film project. They are designed to help the producers realise the maximum potential of the film at the box office and also estimate its worth through other channels. Before the advent of cell phones and Internet the word-of-mouth travelled quite slowly. Sometimes it took 25 weeks of screening of a film to get the word-of-mouth to reach a significant portion of the audience, but now it takes 25 minutes of the first screening for the word-of-mouth to spread to a significant portion of the movie audience. Mausam is an example of this viral phenomenon. I had indicated in my articles before the film’s release that the film had promise but the FT numbers were not consistent
The FT numbers this week show that Rascals has picked up quite well in the last one week. On Friday last week the movies FTI was around 10 and it has moved quickly to 22 today. The Spontaneous Recall of this movie is less than 10 per cent but the urgency to see the movie during its opening weekend is almost 15 per cent. Hence the movie should pick up Rs 6-8 crore the first weekend and then move to collecting another 4-6 crore during the rest of the week. With no big movies in sight till RA.One, Rascals should survive a few more weeks. Two other movies on the FT list, Soundtrack and Love Breakups Zindagi, show very little promise at the box-office.
The FTI of RA.One has been steady around 50 for the last couple of weeks. An FTI of 50 is the threshold number for a block-buster movie. With this number we should look at the first week collection of Rs 100 crore. In my estimate the PoP value of the latest theatrical trailer of the movie is around 50 and hence we place the effectiveness of the trailer to be quite high. The movie has set up new bench-marks in Internet marketing with a tie-up with You Tube. The richness of its web-site and the enormous popularity of You Tube should reflect in FT numbers. So far the FT data shows that RA.One has largely got its mileage from television.
