When Shah Rukh Khan recently asked the audiences to ’make Om Shanti Om the biggest hit of the century’ he possibly knew that his competition was no walkover. Barely hours after the advance booking opened across the country, people were rushing towards their nearest or not-so-nearest theatre to catch the first possible show of the film.
"It’s a madhouse out there!" says a die-hard Shah Rukh Khan fan who was standing outside one of the multiplexes from early this morning. "I barely turned around to confirm the show timing with a friend of mine and the tickets got sold out!"
Trade pundits insist that it’s just the last-minute opening that has resulted in the excitement. But at Mumbai’s G7 multiplex, the craze for Shah Rukh is at its peak. Says Manoj Desai the owner of G7, "All the shows for Om Shanti Om have been booked till Monday."
Abhishek Raina, Head of Marketing, Fame Cinemas however suggests that Shah Rukh will indeed get a tough fight from Bhansali’s Saawariya. "Both Bhansali and Shah Rukh have their loyalists. So bookings for both the films are doing quite well," he says.
On the flipside even as it may seem that Om Shanti Om and Saawariya are giving each other a tough fight, there is a flipside to it too. It may not be entirely wrong to suggest that OSO has possibly managed to collect as much if not more in barely a few hours than what Saawariya has collected over the last four-odd days.
"For the time I stood in the queue, no one was buying Saawariya tickets. Everyone wanted to watch Om Shanti Om," says yet another Shah Rukh Khan supporter.
However, according to Abhishek Raina the sudden surge is because the plans for OSO opened far later than usual. He says, "The bookings for Om Shanti Om opened only on Wednesday. This has pushed the sales grately. We have been getting a lot of enquiries for the film. But plans for Saawariya have been open right through the weekend. You will only have to wait and watch to see which one scores in the long run."
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