Rajinikanth’s ‘Lingaa’ failure has distributors in a soup, is the South God losing his touch?

Reportedly produced at a budget under Rs 90 crore, including ‘a single payment cheque of Rs 40 crore’ to the superstar, Lingaa is estimated to have made Rs 220 crore at the box-office. However, distributors and theatre owners paid close to Rs 8 crore each for the rights to show the film, suffering an incredible loss.

From January 27, distributors from seven industry zones of Tamil Nadu plan to go on an indefinite hunger strike demanding that the producers of ‘Lingaa’ compensate them for the losses suffered, an amount close to Rs 40 crore.

Read: Distributors demand their happy ending from Rajinikanth film ‘Lingaa’

Distributors had been promised that ‘Lingaa’ would be bigger and better than ‘Enthiran’, but they say the film lacked effort and investment.

Rajinikanth’s previous release, ‘Kochadaiiyan’, his first film post recovery from illness, was also much-talked about long before its release. However, the film did not open well, nor did it receive good reviews. Its Box Office collections were also not very impressive for a Rajinikanth film.

Film distributors are starting to question whether the South God is losing his Midas touch. Some even claim that Rajinikanth lost his market value almost 12 years ago with the failure of ‘Baba’. The film was such a big loss, that Rajiniaknth later compensated the distributors for the losses incurred.

Though his films perform well in the South, they rarely open to full houses in the metros.

Still others suggest that these issues are being brought to the forefront to hamper Rajinikanth’s chances in Politics.