Kamal Haasan’s latest Tamil film Vikram, which released on June 3 in theatres, has grossed over Rs 200 crore worldwide and it is still going strong. The film has become this year’s highest grossing Tamil cinema. The Lokesh Kanagaraj directed spy drama has surpassed the Rs 100 crore mark in Tamil Nadu in its first week.
The record breaking performance of Vikram at the box office has reignited the debate over box office rivalry between big stars of Tamil cinema. Rajinikanth and Kamal Haasan’s rivalry at the box office is known to all. While Rajinikanth fans claim that the superstar’s films are blockbuster hits at the box office, the fans of Ajith and Thalapathy Vijay have also joined the debate claiming the films of their respective favourite stars to be the highest grossers.
Ajith’s latest film Valimai, which released in theatres on February 24, saw a great opening and grossed Rs 234 crore worldwide. Similarly, Vijay’s last film Beast also collected over Rs 200 crore at the box office.
However, this debate over box office rivalry in Tamil cinema is not new. It also existed during the days of two legendary actors MG Ramachandran and Sivaji Ganesan, who enjoyed a massive fan following during the 1960s and 70s. The makers of the films of both MGR and Sivaji Ganesan would publish the film’s box office collection in newspapers. They would give the details of total box office collection, number of days the film completed in theatres and the number of screens on which the film was released. This would keep the fans of both MGR and Sivaji Ganesan informed about the performance of the movies of their favourite stars.
A similar competition was witnessed when MGR’s Rickshawkaran (1971) and Sivaji’s Raja (1972) released in a gap of a few months. Newspapers had headlines like ‘Himalayan collection for Sivaji’s Raja’. Raja broke the record of Rickshawkaran by collecting one lakh and eight thousand rupees in ten days and the fans went crazy over it.
How many days a film ran is not the only count of the day, but the numbers of house-full shows were considered worthy of being mentioned in the newspaper advertisements. Such was the loyalty of the fans that they would buy and tear up tickets just to increase the count of tickets sold when the auditoriums were not crowded.
