On March 23, several moviegoers using ticket-booking apps were taken by surprise when they noticed that advance bookings for Ek Din, slated for release on May 1, had already begun. At first, many assumed it was a technical glitch, as ticket sales usually open just a few days, or at best a week, before a film’s release. However, it soon became clear that this was no error and that the makers had indeed decided to open bookings for the Junaid Khan-Sai Pallavi starrer, that too 39 days in advance.
Bollywood Hungama surveyed the film’s ticket sales across major centres in the country and found that tickets for Ek Din are currently on sale in nearly 20 cities. In all cinemas, tickets have been opened for only one show so far.
Delhi-NCR takes the cake, with Ek Din’s advance booking opening in 24 screens, followed by Mumbai with 11 screens. In Chandigarh and Pune, tickets are available in 3 theatres each. Meanwhile, the advance booking has opened in one screen each in Ahmedabad, Jaipur, Surat, Vadodara, Indore, Bhubaneswar, Amritsar, Dehradun, Guwahati, Udaipur, Prayagraj, Raipur, Patna, Gorakhpur, Jalandhar, etc.
What has come as a pleasant surprise is that despite such an unusually early start to advance sales, and despite Ek Din not being a front-loaded film, the response has already been encouraging. Though the film appears to cater more to an urban, multiplex audience, it has also managed to generate curiosity in B centres. The biggest surprise has emerged from Raipur. As of 8:00 am on April 11, 46 tickets had already been sold at PVR City Center Raipur, an impressive number given the circumstances. PVR Palladium Mall Ahmedabad follows with 37 tickets sold, while Inox Orion Mall Gorakhpur has sold 18 tickets. Several cinemas in Mumbai and Delhi-NCR, too, have already sold around 20 tickets each.
As per data accessed by Bollywood Hungama, more than 520 tickets have already been booked across the country. This has happened despite the makers doing negligible promotion around the opening of advance sales. Interestingly, Ek Din is produced by Aamir Khan, a filmmaker long associated with bold and path-breaking release strategies. Opening the film’s advance booking nearly 40 days before release appears to be yet another unconventional move from his playbook.
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