Repeat-Run Business: What’s That?

The various multiplex chains must’ve realised the hard way that it doesn’t pay to screen repeat-run films, especially when there aren’t too many new films to show – as it happened last week. In a bid to tide over difficult times due to lack of new releases because of World Cup cricket matches being played, all the multiplex chains offered their clients a mix of repeat-run films, many of them hits and super-hits. But collections of these repeat-run films at most of the properties of the multiplexes were so dismal that almost all the multiplexes would’ve been far better off keeping their screens closed. For, in conducting shows, the multiplexes had to incur variable expenditure like electricity, which could’ve been saved had the auditoria remained shut. What Ghajini, 3 Idiots, Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi and Dabangg couldn’t achieve last week, other repeat-run films are trying to achieve this week. And it doesn’t require great intelligence to predict that these repeat-run fares will face the same fate as the films of the reigning Khan brigade.

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