Sivaji: the rat race for the rights

The stage is set for the King to arrive, its time for the pretenders to move aside, the royal march is about to begin; make way for Sivaji-The Boss. Come May 31st and cinema halls will choke with crowds, theaters will reverberate with the thunderous applause of the Superstar’s fans; as he sets the screens on fire.

But then, before all this can happen, there are a few issues that need to be sorted out. And when the issues are related to Sivaji’s distribution we all know that it will involve serious negotiations to settle them down.

The Chennai zone issues seem to have been settled with Abhirami Ramanathan and Nag Ravi laying their hands on the rights. Coimbatore, Erode, Tiruppur and Nilagiri have been bagged by Tiruppur Subramaniam. The competition for Madurai, North Arcot, South Arcot and Chengelpattu are on full swing as the distributorship rights for those areas have not been decided yet; more so with the release date just round the corner. While Anbu and Azhagu are vying for Madurai, some big names including Oscar Ravichandran and Ananda Pictures Suresh are in the fray for the Chengalpattu and Arcot areas.

Meanwhile, few have voiced their opinion that Sivaji be bought only on the MG-FH basis. However, Tiruppur Subramaniam is strongly opposing this demand. He pointed out that Rajini is not a man who would allow people to incur losses due to him. The compensation that he paid for Baba is a fine example. Baba notwithstanding, the huge profits that everyone made due to Chandramukhi should be enough for them to repose faith in Sivaji. He also said that there had been no compulsions for anyone to buy Sivaji at an MG rate. If there were no takers, AVM is more than willing to release the movie all by itself.

It was the Theater Owners Association that had come up with the MG-FH demand. Tiruppur Subramaniam made a point that associations getting involved unnecessarily was undesirable and that they must remain as inconspicuous as possible.

Well, those were the details of the rat race going on to make the maximum out of Sivaji. After all, it is only once in two or three years that the Superstar’s movie is being released. Here we leave you with a statistic that will give you a measure of Sivaji’s magnitude. Sixty prints have been ordered for the Coimbatore area alone. Still not surprised then read on. The previous highest was just 36, and that was for Pokkiri. Maybe now you get our point, this is what we call the SUPERSTAR effect.