Five trailers to release with Agneepath

Karan Johar’s Agneepath that opens on January 26 has five big-ticket movies unveiling their first look along with it. While the trailers of Dharma Productions’ Ek Main Aur Ekk Tu, Aamir Khan’s Talaash and Akshay Kumar’s Rowdy Rathore have been attached...

Karan Johar’s Agneepath that opens on January 26 has five big-ticket movies unveiling their first look along with it. While the trailers of Dharma Productions’ own Imran Khan-Kareena Kapoor starrer Ek Main Aur Ekk Tu, Aamir Khan’s Talaash and Akshay Kumar’s Rowdy Rathore have been attached to the Hrithik Roshan-Priyanka Chopra starrer, Saif Ali Khan and Venus are paying the theatres to also screen the trailers of Agent Vinod and Tezz.

“Attaching trailers to big releases is effective due to the eyeballs the weekend generates, and in this case, it’s a long weekend due to the Republic Day holiday,” reasons Johar, adding, “But it can only be leveraged if there is exhibitor support.” And the film, directed by Karan Malhotra, has that support. Sunil Punjabi, CEO, Cinemax India Ltd, points out that Agneepath has, over the last three months, built up consumer expectations.

He feels it is, therefore, the right platform for these movies that are lining up to release, as they will be able to reach out to a wide cine-goer base and right target audiences. “The marketing team is following the Big Bang theory, hit as many eyeballs as you can at the same time,” he says.

Johar isn’t sure if paying for promos to play at theatres is an exercise one should emulate, but Sunil is pretty gung-ho about the new trend. “With a film like Agneepath, the regular ad volumes are up by almost 15 times, so we would be losing out on revenue if we had to accommodate these trailers for free. But by charging a nominal rate that’s one-fifth of what we’d charge the advertisers, we’ve created a win-win situation for exhibitions, distributors and producers.”