A Rare Hat-trick Disasters Feat For Top Star

The new film of Nandamuri Balakrishna, Ruler, has hit the cinemas. It released with a decent fanfare all over on December 20th. Unfortunately, the openings have been disastrous.

The first day collections of Ruler are said to be a little above 4 Cr. It is including more than 1 Cr hires. It means the real collections would be less than 3 Cr. Nandamuri Balakrishna, despite his lack of success, has been able to generate openings. Most of his recent past films (except NTR Mahanayakudu) have crossed the 5 Cr mark on the opening day. It should give clarity on how bad are the numbers.

The combination of KS Ravikumar and Nandamuri Balakrishna was never a hot one despite having a successful Jai Simha before them. Still, based on the mass promos, some face-saving opening day was expected. Unfortunately, even that is not the case here.

All the hopes right now are to see if the mass centres can stabilise at a lower level during the Christmas vacation period. If there is a further drop in the weekend numbers, Ruler could fold by the time Christmas is over.

What it also means is a hat-trick of disasters for Nandamuri Balakrishna in a single year. The NTR biopic movies and Ruler will give him that dubious distinction. Others have had back to back disasters, but the single-year thing is what separates this feat from rest.