As much-hyped gangster action-drama Thug Life faces a big debacle at the box office, despite the heavyweight combination of Kamal Haasan, Mani Ratnam and AR Rahman, several theatres in Tamil Nadu have stopped screening the movie, barely a week after its release. What’s more, they are likely to seek compensation for the losses.

The ₹130-crore OTT deal for the movie signed with Netflix is also now likely to undergo a review with a possible cut in the signing amount, sources said. Industry sources say there could be a 20-25 per cent drop in price. The OTT release is slated generally after 28 days from theatrical release in the case of Tamil movies, while it is 56 days for Hindi movies.

Meanwhile, according to sources, theatre owners are likely to seek compensation from the distributors — Red Giant Movies — and producers Kamal Haasan and Mani Ratnam. When a movie flops, the primary financial losses are usually borne by producers. Depending on revenue sharing ratio between theatre owners and distributors, the losses will be compensated by the latter. In the past, top actors have paid theatre owners for poor performance of movies.

Poor collection

The first week collection of Thug Life was just around ₹45 crore, according to movie collections tracker Sacnilk. In comparison, Vikram starring Kamal Haasan released in 2022 made ₹168 crore in its first week.

The opening day (June 5) gross collection of Thug Life in Tamil Nadu was around ₹10 crore tracked in 413 cinemas, as per box office reporting service Cinetrak. However, the collection started dwindling from day 2 as the movie got poor reviews.

The movie struggled during the ‘Second Friday’ of its release in Tamil Nadu collecting barely ₹62.5 lakh from 218 cinemas, as per Cinetrak’s tracker on June 13. The weekend saw less than 25 per cent footfall in theatres for the movie.

Published on June 15, 2025