When 3 Idiots ran 5 weeks, it was kind of unexpected because even by that time, Bollywood already depended on carpet bombing multiplexes and netting as many viewers as possible in the opening weekend. So any run of over 2 weeks would be considered amazing. And Avatar had the longest run of a Hollywood movie in India after maybe Titanic.

So, if the audience is enthused and turning up in big numbers, theater owners won't take off the film. It is impossible to conceive that the hype factor in a Rajni film could be low but maybe that is what happened. I did feel the buzz was very low in the run up to Linga's release. And once the numbers didn't (ostensibly) live up to theaters' expectations in the first few days, they may have panicked. Rajini may have a huge loyal following but his films must still be promoted in the way they are today in order to be commercially successful. The anticipation towards PK has been building up steadily in the last month or so and even before that, they kept planting stories in the media to stoke audience interest. On Friday, it was next to impossible to get tickets. I have decided to wait for the Christmas week to watch it and I am pretty confident it will run a second week.

Maybe using so much hype and promotion is a cynical way to do the movie business but in that case, Superstar also shouldn't demand supernormal acting fees. If you don't want to play the hype game, then keep it low key and cheap so that it is easier for the distributors and theater owners to make money on the film.