Dr Murli Manohar, the co-producer of the latest Rajinikanth starrer Kochadaiiyaan which opened to mixed reports, admits the film has not done as well as expected in the North Indian belt.
Nonetheless the Kochadaiiyaan team is determined to go ahead with the sequel.
Says the producer, "The 3D Motion-Capture technique was new to the audiences in India. While Tamil and Telugu audiences took to the new format of storytelling wholeheartedly, audiences in the Hindi belt neither understood nor did they want to go with the technique. So yes, the response in the North has been disappointing."
Nonetheless Dr Manohar is confident of recovering costs. "We are already a big success in Tamil and Telugu. Recovery of investment in Hindi would take longer than we expected. But we're confident of getting back our investments."
When reminded that many critics found the animation and computer graphics to be shoddy, the producer said, "We did what we could, given restrictions of time and budget. I agree we could've done a lot better. We will work much harder on the sequel to Kochadaiiyaan."