Adipurush: PVR Inox shares plunge as Prabhas-starrer fails to impress filmgoers

Shares of PVR Inox dropped 3 per cent on Friday, as much-awaited Prabhas- and Kriti Sanon-starrer movie 'Adipurush' failed to impress fans on the day of its release. Market analysts were expecting a good response to the movie, which could have added to June quarter results. The stock fell 3.31 per cent to close at Rs 1,450.45.

Prabhudas Lilladher noted that advance booking trends were encouraging for the movie. Ahead of the release, the brokerage on Thursday said the performance of the film would be critical for PVR-Inox’s fortunes in the June quarter.

That said, movie critic Taran Adarsh in a tweet on Friday called the movie disappointing and gave a rating of 1.5 stars out of five. Here's what he said:

So far, four movies have crossed the net box office collection (NBOC) barrier of Rs 100 crore in the June quarter. "If Adipurush is able to net upwards of Rs 500 crore, we believe PVR-Inox will report a better performance than 4QFY23 (managed pre-IND AS Ebitda breakeven)," it said on Thursday.

PVR Inox’s stock was up quite a bit this week in anticipation of bumper numbers from ‘Adipurush’.

Based on Nuvama's channel checks and industry data, footfalls were likely be stronger than expectations – PVR INOX to lead the major chunk.

"For its first weekend, PVR INOX has already sold 5.5 lakh tickets and expect this number to re-rate further. We see a significant chunk of revenue originating from southern India, mainly as: i) Telangana government grant’s ticket price hikes for the film. ii) 31 per cent of PVR INOX’s screens are in south India with high occupancy," Nuvama had said earlier.

The mythological drama was based on the Hindu epic 'Ramayana'. It was under a host of controversies ever since its teaser and trailer were released. However, PVR-Inox had high hopes from Adipurush, which has a budget of Rs 500 crore.

According to some estimates, Adipurush was likely to collect Rs 100-120 crore in terms of worldwide gross box office collection on Day 1 of its release. The movie was released on over 6,200 screens in India, which includes 4,000 screens for the Hindi version.