IndicineFBO accurately predicts the Rustom vs Mohenjo Daro clash

Predicting FBO (first day box office) numbers of two big films was always going to be difficult, because the Friday word-of-mouth, which can make a difference of 10-15% to the first day collections, is impossible to predict on Thursday.

However, there was absolutely no doubt as to which film would emerge as the winner of the clash. Everything from the star cast, director and scale was in Mohenjo Daro’s favour. Unfortunately, the poor trailer acted as an instant-killer to all the buzz the film was carrying right from the time it was announced. A.R. Rahman’s music was satisfactory to some, but the promos that followed made little or no impact.

Sensing that the campaign wasn’t gaining any momentum, the makers released quite a few action promos and posters to control the damage, but it was already too late as Rustom with a fantastic trailer and a well-planned marketing campaign, was not only running away with the momentum but also putting a lot of pressure on the marketing team of Mohenjo Daro.

When someone like Hrithik Roshan comes out and says he was “pleasantly surprised” by the better-than-expected reviews that the film was getting, we wonder what he was actually expecting? The film has received mixed reviews, if that’s better than what you expected, he was probably expecting negative reviews.. when you know the response is going to be negative, why risk a clash? Why not move two weeks ahead, a week before or even a week after? It would give your film the best possible chance to recover as much as it can.

If it’s ego at play, isn’t losing a clash like this, a much bigger embarrassment than moving your film to a different date? People will soon forget about a clash that was supposed to happen, but a lost clash will never been forgotten.

Back to the topic, our FBO prediction for Friday was all about first setting a combined total for the two films. We arrived at a decision on Thursday evening, after getting confirmation over the screen count and reports of advance booking, that the two films combined would collect somewhere around 23 crore.

After that, it was all about calculating the difference in collections. Rustom was clearly going to be the favourite at multiplexes, more so since the multiplex audience have never really supported Akshay Kumar the way they have in recent times. The factors in favour of Mohenjo Daro were higher number of screens, better interest as compared to Rustom at smaller centres and Hrithik returning after two years.

We were internally discussing over a single-digit figure for Mohenjo Daro, a figure of around 9.5 crore was given a serious thought, but we finally decided to go with 10.7 crore.

The Mohenjo Daro prediction was inaccurate by 17%, while Rustom falls in the accurate range. But the prediction that we are proud of is the combined total of the two films. Our FBO prediction for both Mohenjo Daro and Rustom was Rs 23.3 crore, the actual official total of the two films is Rs 22.98 crore. The difference was just around 1%!