With India’s most expensive film, Bahubali, poised to open Friday morning, pre-release anticipation built up to fever pitch across Vijayawada as fans made frantic calls to ‘contacts’ to beg, borrow or steal a ticket and every theatre in the city, single-screen and multiplex, pulled every other movie off the bill to squeeze in as many shows as they can of the Prabhas starrer.
With students either planning to see the film or stay home to sulk over not getting a ticket, schools and colleges anticipate poor attendance on Friday. Roll calls were no fuller on Thursday, with pupils out at large in the effort to get a ticket somehow, somewhere. There will be no movie other than Bahubali on show in all of the 84 theatres in Krishna district. The city’s biggest multiplex PVR Cinepolis will have 25 shows on its six screens, beginning 10.15 am. The two Inoxes, Urvashi and LEPL, managed 23 shows on their six screen together.
Trade pundits said this was the first time that all theatres in an entire district have been commandeered for one movie.
With tickets having evaporated from online sales outlets, fans made forlorn visits to theatres to see if they could cadge a ticket from the management, which, however, were unwilling to part with any for love or money. The Rajamouli-directed CGI and SFX extravaganza was the talk of the town, in government offices as well as police stations, with conversation quoting fantastic figures for black market prices.
Some disappointed fans joined a protest staged by the Democratic Youth Federation of India (DYFI) outside Apsara theatre. The student party’s leaders alleged that theatres hoarded the tickets while claiming to have put them online and were now selling them in black for up to Rs. 6,000 a piece or delivering them as gifts to police officers and top officials.
Multiplexes like PVR have raised their prices to Rs. 300 each against Rs. 75 normally and made it mandatory to buy a combo of popcorn and a soft drink. Single screens put up ‘House Full’ boards a full day before the first show on Friday.
For the most privileged of fans, the producers organised a benefit show at 30 theatres in the district at 1 am on Friday.
Proceeds from the show will go towards construction of the new capital of Andhra Pradesh, according to Sai Korapati, the film’s distributor in Krishna district.
In Bhimavaram, fans of the lead star Prabhas were denied permission by the police to stage a parade of elephants. Irked by this, they marched in a rally to register their protest.
