“I was the first girl to come, and I was here at 3.30 am. There were guys here who were waiting here from 12.30 am. I came and started a second queue for woman,” said Shravya who was at a theatre. “I have never seen such a massive response to any film so far. The rush was beyond our control. I think there were tens and thousands of people,” informed a senior executive of Prasadz IMAX. “It seemed it would be very easy to get the tickets, early in the morning.
But as time passed by and the number of people kept increasing, we eventually realised there wasn’t any use coming early because people were skipping the queues and pushing their way ahead. Everyone wanted to buy as many tickets as possible, but after sometime, the theatre staff was giving only two tickets per person which was quite disappointing,” said Pratyusha.
The long hours of wait at the beelines outside ticket counters did test the mettle of some hardcore fanboys, who went all ballistic and started tearing down posters of the movie, while a few even went to the extent of lighting them on fire.
“To control the crowd, the ticket counter was closed for a five to ten minute gap after a few tickets were distributed. This resulted in people getting frustrated and they ended up breaking windows and tearing posters,” added Pratyusha.
“It was a bit scary to see the police resorting to lathi charge because even I was in between the crowd and was afraid of being hurt,” Pratyusha added. Saifabad Station admin retorted saying that there was no lathi charge, but police personnel were stationed outside the theatre to handle the rush. While Punjagutta Police stationed personnel outside PVR to check the rush.
Until Wednesday, hashtag Baahubali on Facebook or any other social networking site would have treated you with a slew of teasers, dialogue promos, trailers, fanboy comments and active marketing campaign by makers/stake holders .
But Wednesday was a different day, videos of mad rush outside theatres in Hyderabad shared by user Pranita Jonnalagedda, photos shared by user Gopi Krishna, rocked Facebook and YouTube with over 50k views in mere hours and a couple hundred shares. Meanwhile, users were also selling tickets on Facebook groups like Spread the Word for thrice to four times the price.
