The Siddharth Anand-directed Fighter has scored a lukewarm response in advance booking as the aerial actioner has sold around 78,000 tickets across the top 3 national chains – PVR, Inox and Cinepolis - for the opening day alone. PVR leads the show with 66,000 tickets, followed by Cinepolis with 12,000 tickets.
The advance booking for Fighter will struggle to even go near 2 lakh across the top three national chains, which is around 50% lower than films like Brahmastra [3,02,000] and Tiger 3 [3,03,000] and even lower than Dunki [2,24,000]. One must note that Brahmastra opened at Rs. 30 crore and Tiger 3 was riding on the strong pull of Salman Khan in the mass belts which pushed it to Rs. 42 crore. Fighter is looking at a start of Rs. 22 to 25 crore, which is a sub-par opening for a big-budget film. The advances in mass circuits are below par which indicates there is hardly any interest to watch the film first day first show.
It's a pity that a big-budget aerial action film with top stars and top directors suffered by a very poor marketing and PR campaign and the producers need to relook on their strategies for positioning big-ticket entertainers. A film like Fighter should have easily looked at a Rs. 35 to 40 crore day one, but there just isn't enough awareness in the on-ground audience.
The final advance of Fighter in the top 3 chains will be around 160,000, and its on word of mouth to push the walk-in audience and lead the film to a respectable day one figure.
