Should Jaggesh’s Thothapuri have bowed out of the Dasara box office race?

Is it a fallout of the failure of director Vijayaprasad’s last film, Petromax? Are audiences wary of the adult comedy in Jaggesh’s latest with the director, after their earlier Neerdose? Or is it suffering because there are other big-ticket releases this week? Well, whatever be the reason, but the Navarasa Nayaka’s Thothapuri – Part 1, which is releasing on September 30 is yet to pick up on online booking sites.

The film, which, according to the trailer and other short videos that the team has revealed, is high on adult comedy, has, surprisingly, been cleared U/A by the censor board. It is also supposedly releasing not only in Kannada, but Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam and Hindi as well. With only a day to go for the film’s release, the response to it has been poor as far as ticket bookings go. Given that Thothapuri is in competition with films likes Naane Varuven, Ponniyin Selvan and Vikram Vedha, besides Kantara, of course, industry insiders say that business for the Jaggesh-starrer will pick up only if there is positive word-of-mouth publicity on Friday.

But should the makers have averted a box-office clash and either released the film earlier or pushed it ahead? “The general perception among audiences is that Vijayaprasad’s film is not for family audiences. In fact, at the trailer launch, Kiccha Sudeep had said that if anyone other than Jaggesh had said any of those lines, they would have been trolled to no end. The trailer had a lot of double entendre and that is what most people think the flavour of the film is going to be like. That’s Vijayaprasad’s brand. That will have a negative impact on the film, which will change only if the first-day-first-show reports are good. At the moment, even Kantara is struggling against Ponniyin Selvan. The Tamil version of Mani Ratnam’s magnum opus has good occupancy on September 1, with all of the Imax screens almost sold out. Since Jaggesh’s Raghavendra Stores had vacated the August 5 slot, Thothapuri could have been slipped in there or any subsequent week, but the makers insisted on sticking to the Dasara week, which may prove costly for them,” says a source.

A fan on social media concurred, “Thothapuri should have released at the start of September; it would have got good number of screens and response from audience as there was no competition.” Another added, “For Kannada audiences, Thothapuri is an adult comedy that is best watched on OTT. If it doesn’t pick up at the box office, it will anyway be available to stream soon.”