There was no masti, no fun when the cast of Great Grand Masti met reporters on the weekend to explain the reason behind their film’s poor show at the box-office, a rare occurrence indeed.
The Inder Kumar-directed sex comedy had bagged a poor Rs2.5 crore nett on its opening day on 15 July, and followed it up with the same collection on Saturday. It's opening weekend collections now stand at Rs8.25 crore nett. The film that was supposed to release on 22 July, was advanced by a week after it was leaked online.
It’s not too often that we find actors holding a press conference to explain the reason for their failure, but the director and his cast met reporters on Saturday blaming the ‘leakage’ for the poor show of their film.
“It’s a big loss for us. This has happened for the first time, when a film is leaked 17 days before its official release. It has killed our film. It’s a tough time for us. We are sad and upset,” bemoaned Kumar.
Vivek Oberoi even had the gumption to say that the loss was to the tune of Rs100 crore.
“We are facing huge losses. It’s unprecedented as the film was leaked three weeks before the official release. It must be almost Rs100 crore loss,” said Oberoi.
Meanwhile Riteish Deshmukh stated that they learnt about the leak through one of their fans. "We were at IIFA awards when we saw a fan posting an image from the film and it had ‘For Censor’ written on it. We initially thought it’s a movie still, but later learned that the film was released online. We immediately informed the producers and we all jumped in to prevent it. We started talking to people in government including the I&B ministry, police officials and cybercrime cell,” said an upset Deshmukh.
Sizzling hot Urvashi Rautela compared the leak to that of being murdered.
“When ‘Udta Punjab’ got leaked online, all of us felt bad. I never expected that my film will also face a similar situation. It’s really disheartening. It’s nothing less than a murder,” Rautela chided.
While one does empathise with the team of Great Grand Masti but the collections were bound to be low because they were competing with the box-office king Salman Khan, whose Sultan continues to soar at the box office having bagged a nett of Rs34 in its second weekend. (Sultan has thus far bagged Rs263 crore nett in its two weeks). Critics, too, have never been fans of such sex comedies often labelling them as crass.
It must be recalled though that the earlier film Grand Masti (2013) had touched the Rs100 crore mark, grossing Rs145 crore worldwide. Sadly, for the makers, the leaked copy and Sultan has landed them a heavy blow this time.