Kalki 2898 AD has had a roaring opening at the box office, with 191 crore worldwide and 93 crore in India. Still, it is one of the biggest openers by Prabhas. The film did not work on a huge marketing strategy and kept it subtle, playing on the biggest strength – the star cast that includes Prabhas, Deepika Padukone, Kamal Haasan, Amitabh Bachchan, Disha Patani, and others.

In an exclusive conversation with Koimoi, the marketing director of the film, Varun Gupta, talked about how much role marketing and publicity play in bringing a huge turnaround for the box office collection of films.

Varun, while talking to Koimoi, explained about the marketing budgets of biggies like Kalki 2898 AD and Baahubali and said,  “It is generally a producer’s call of how much money to spend on the marketing. If he has 100 rupees in total, does he want to spend 95 on the film and five on marketing? And there are a few producers who will spend 50 on film and 50 on marketing.”

However, does marketing a film help to push the box office numbers as well? Making us understand the dynamics of the opening of a film and the overall box office, Varun said, “If you take any kind of reference and examples of the past, name one film, which people remember even today, just because it was marketed well, no, they will only remember the eventually do well, if the film is good. What marketing does it, it helps it to get that day one, day two numbers.”

Kalki 2898 AD marketing director who has also worked on films like Baahubali, Saaho, Yeh Jawani Hai Deewani and others said, “So classic example is Adipurush. Let’s understand that Adipurush is not remembered as a film that’s worked. But it is one of Prabhas’s highest opener in Hindi. We can’t take away that fact. So that is what marketing can do, wherein it can get a lot of audiences on the first, second day to watch your film.”

Kalki 2898 AD at the box office opened at 22.50 crore in Hindi, 93 crore in India, and 191 crore worldwide. Currently, in five days, the film stands at 550 crore worldwide.

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