New Delhi: Touted as Asia’s costliest film till date, Rajinikanth’s ‘2.0’ is all set to hit the screens on 29 November. Rajinikanth-Akshay Kumar starrer movie is a year late in arriving at the box office but the delay has not affected the business of the 2010 ‘Enthiran’ sequel. ‘2.0’ producers, LYCA, which reported having spent over ₹ 550 crore, have already recovered a large chunk of their production costs through the sale of satellite, digital and distribution rights at a record price for any regional language film, NDTV reported. LYCA have recovered as much ₹ 120 through satellite rights and ₹ 60 crore through digital rights. The distribution rights for Telangana/Andhra Pradesh, Kerala, Karnataka and the northern belt for the film have been sold to individual distributors while the producers have retained the rights in Tamil Nadu and overseas. About 120 crores worth of advance booking has been done for 2.0. Box office analysts believe that the movie can break the record of Amitabh-Aamir’s opening day collection (52 crore) of Thugs of Hindostan, according to a report in Dailyhunt.
Here are a few facts about ‘2.0’:
The making of the movie
‘2.0’ is being hailed as ‘India’s first 75 million dollar VFX wonder’ which translates to ₹ 532 crore. Around 3,000 technicians from around the world were involved in the making of the film. ‘2.0’ is more expensive than several successful Hollywood VFX flicks like Deadpool ($58 million), X-Men ($75 million) and Batman ($35 million).
Bahubali of screens
‘2.0’ will release in around 10,000 screens worldwide, along with 6,600-6,800 screens in India. It has broken the record of SS Rajamouli’s Baahubali 2, as the film had hit 9,000 screens across the globe, out of which 6,500 were in India.
Total returns so far for ‘2.0’:
Satellite rights: ₹ 120 crore (all versions); digital rights: ₹ 60 crore (all versions); northern belt rights: ₹ 80 crore (advance basis); Andhra Pradesh/Telangana rights: ₹ 70 crore; Karnataka rights: ₹ 25 crore; Kerala rights: ₹ 15 crore.
Ror Rodriguez: Costume designer
Hollywood costume designer Ror Rodriguez, best known for his work in the costume department on English television series such as “Dardevil” and “Supergirl”, has been reportedly roped in for this film. Ror has worked on the suit Charlie Cox wears in “Daredevil”, and has also been part of the team that worked on the suit for CBS’s “Supergirl”.
Akshay’s first Tamil film
It will be Akshay Kumar’s first film in Tamil. Film director S Shankar had approached “The Terminator” star Arnold Schwarzenegger first for the villain role in the ‘2.0’ but things did not work out and the role finally went to Akshay Kumar.
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