Mohenjo Daro Trailer: Trade, Audience Response and IndicineFBO

One of the most anticipated trailers of the year was launched yesterday. There was no launch event or media interaction, but the makers decided to launch the trailer on the Star TV Network, followed by the internet (both at 8:57 PM yesterday).

The response, like every other ’much-awaited biggie’, was mixed. When the expectations are high, the chances of disappointing the audience is higher – and that seems to be the case with Ashutosh Gowarikar’s Mohenjo Daro too.

We asked 20 people in the trade (including theatre owners, distributors, trade veterans etc) for their feedback on the trailer. The response was mixed to negative – 5 of them said the trailer was ‘good’, 13 said it was average (under-whelming, disappointing, something missing were the words used) and the remaining 2 said poor. It needs to be pointed out that none of these people were in any which way associated with UTV, Hrithik Roshan or Ashutosh Gowariker. Opinions were from known and unbiased sources.

The audience response falls in mixed to good category. In our poll on Twitter, 36% people voted for ‘outstanding’, 20% voted for ‘good’, 25% voted for ‘average’ and 19% voted for ‘poor’. On Youtube, the percentage of people who have ‘liked’ the trailer is around 85% which is average. Usually, films that score 95% or more likes against dislikes is considered to be excellent, 90% or more is good, while anything less than 85% is average. (Read article: Trailer rating of 2016 films)

These are not the only two ways that we categorise the ‘audience response’. It’s a combination of many things which includes Twitter polls, Youtube likes vs dislikes ratio, feedback from real audience and even our own comments section (feedback from the known ‘neutral’ people is obviously given more importance).

For our own rating, we’d go with 7 on 10 for the trailer.

IndicineFBO: We start with 15.4 crore as the first day prediction for Mohenjo Daro. The film needed a strong trailer – which would’ve probably also made the makers of ‘Rustom’ think of averting a clash, but the response so far hasn’t really been overwhelmingly positive. Certainly not in the ‘Bajirao Mastani’ league, the trailer of which shifted the pre-release balance from a one-sided clash to an interesting one with Shah Rukh Khan’s Dilwale.

NOTE: The final IndicineFBO prediction is only made on the day before the release of the film (August 11th in Mohenjo Daro’s case). The FBO will change depending on the response to the music, song promos and other promotional activities. The music and the promos that follow will now be the key for Mohenjo Daro.