Tracking the buzz for Agent Vinod

by Dr C R Sridhar, Foresight Analytics (March 17, 2012)

March, April and May tend to be packed for us in India. Starting with Holi, we have cricket, school exams and summer holidays. With so much activity the audience tend to be quite busy and the attendance in theatres get affected. In many places the audience use theatres to beat the heat off in an air-conditioned theatre.

The films we are tracking that are scheduled for release in April are just five, the scheduled releases are just one a week. Of these films in May, only Housefull 2 has a significant FTI. I estimate the FTI of this film to be around 40 today and is likely to build up to 45. With this FTI we should expect a big film. We will track this film through FilmTrac till its release.

Agent Vinod is scheduled for release next week, on March 23, in theatres. The current FTI of this film is 43. This film has been steadily maintaining this number over the last couple of months. With a U/A certificate the opening weekend collections will not be as good as a film with the same FTI but a U certificate.

The values of the different parameters of the film show a good balance. The Spontaneous Awareness is at 17 per cent and the DPSOWE is at 42.6 per cent. And hence one expects the film to open above 30-40 per cent attendance and pick up during the weekend. The audience who definitely plan to see the movie are 66.5 per cent. When we compare the ratios of DPS and DPSOWE it appears that most of the films audience will be in the theatres during the first weekend. The film does not show sufficient audience to carry it through for more than two weeks with strong numbers.

The source of awareness of Agent Vinod has been mainly through TV. The awareness through hoardings is low compared to many successful films in the past. The awareness through Internet is significantly high, indicating the lower age profile of the first week audience.

During the next two weeks the box office numbers will be filled by Agent Vinod and I expect the film open the first weekend with Rs 20-25 crore and finish with around Rs 35-40 crore the first week.

Would featuring a promo with Kareena's stunts have made a difference? And what about the fact that she didnt start promoting until this week?

Also, Saif has got it into hsi mind that "Saifeena" drives people away, so he tried avoiding their clips even more. Solo Kareena clips woudl have given too much away.

Lets see how this does.

This isnt a holiday release and neither is Siaf a Khan or Kumar, so this will have to do well based on content and WOM.

You can call it a holiday release. 23rd is Ugadi which is a holiday in South India and Maharashtra.

On topic apart from the first promo nothing was interesting. The promos after that was a rehash of the first. The songs apart from Pungi are very boring. The item girls are cold. They should have got Indian girls to do the item songs.

But initial buzz of agent Vinod is bigger than Don2 and Agneepath..

If you can read graphs..

P.S. the boi.co.in trade tracker gets it all wrong every time..Agent Vinod will do 30+

I'm like..dude...why are you even bothering to promote these random girls? No one gives a care.

Show us Kareena Kapoor. She has starpower, not Mallika Hayden or Maryam Zakaria, though Maryam's gorgeous and a great dancer!

Bigger than Agneepath & Don2? Nawww, Saif or Bebo dont have that kinda starpower.