Vijay Deverakonda is all set to make his Hindi debut with the Puri Jagannadh directed film, liger, which also stars Ananya Panday. The advance opened Monday, but despite a very high promotional campaign, it was a poor show for the film on the pre-booking front.
The film has sold about 16,000 tickets across the three national chains for Friday with an advance across India of less than Rs. 1 crore for opening day. The whole game for liger now depends on the bookings on site. Telugu audience’s reading is wrong and if Hindi audience’s reading is similar the numbers are liger will send shockwaves through the industry in the longer term.
The film appeals to the single-screen audience, who prefer to walk into the cinemas. The hope is that the masses and the single-screen audience will come out in large numbers on the release day. If the walk-in audience doesn’t come on board liger, the film’s opening will be under Rs. 4 crores, which in itself is a good result for a debut movie, but given the hype created for the film, it seems like a disappointing result.
The all-India advance is around Rs. 80 lakhs for the Hindi version and tomorrow will tell us the fate of the film.