Rajinikanth-starrer Kochadaiiyaan a smash hit, elicits tsunami of tweets

Superstar Rajinikanth's much-awaited Kochadaiiyaan-The Legend released nationwide on Friday across multiple languages. Popularly known as Thalaivar, Rajinikanth recently joined Twitter and has just posted seven tweets but has already 482,000 followers*.

According to the Twitter India statistics for his latest movie, between Friday (May 23) and Saturday (May 24, 3 pm), the top five countries that are tweeting about the movie are India, United States, Malaysia, the United Kingdom and the United Arab Emirates while the top five Indian states tweeting about it are Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Delhi.
 

Kochadaiiyaan (The king with a long, curly mane), a Tamil film that has used Photorealistic Performance Capture technology for the very first time in the history of Indian cinema, is a debut directorial by Rajinikanth's daughter, Soundarya R. Ashwin. The same technology has also been used in Hollywood movies such as Avatar, Tin Tin and Beowulf. Kochadaiiyaan is written by K. S. Ravikumar. It is presented by Eros International and is a Mediaone Global Entertainment Limited production.
 
On its release day (May 23), from 9 am to 10 am, fans tweeted the maximum on Kochadaiiyaan, followed by Saturday from 11 am to 12 noon. According to Twitter India statistics, of all the conversations around the movie since Friday, 40 per cent of the tweets mentioned the movie by name, 35 per cent mentioned Rajinikanth and about 11 per cent mentioned Bollywood actress Deepika Padukone who is cast in it besides South India's other leading actors.
 
According to Eros International, which is distributing the movie, Kochadaiiyaan is a smash hit, breaking all records in Tamil Nadu. Being the biggest Rajinikanth opener, some trade pundits are predicting it to make Rs 100 crore just in Tamil Nadu.

In the overseas market as well, the film is creating waves and is a huge hit in the UAE and has already broken all records with a good response from the US, Malaysia and Singapore, according to Eros International.
 
Oscar-winning composer A R Rahman has composed the music of the movie, who has won two Academy Awards for his musical contribution to the multi-Oscar winning film Slumdog Millionaire (2008) by Danny Boyle.

However, the movie has got mixed responses from viewers as far as the animation is concerned.
 
*The number of Rajinikanth followers when this story was filed.