The Kerala Story pulled down from theatres in Tamil Nadu

The Kerala Story, which has been mired in controversies even before its release, is now no longer running in theatres in Tamil Nadu. The movie had released in very few theatres but is now not available for booking in any theatres in Tamil Nadu. Helmed by Sudipto Sen and produced by Vipul Amrutlal Shah, The Kerala Story has triggered a massive political row with many calling it a propaganda film. Also read: Vivek Agnihotri warns The Kerala Story team will get ‘unimaginable hate, feel suffocated’: Your lives won’t be same

The Kerala Story stars Adah Sharma, Yogita Bihani, Siddhi Idnani and Sonia Balani in the lead roles. The trailer came under fire as it previously claimed that 32,000 girls from the state went missing and later joined the terrorist group, ISIS. The Kerala High Court had noted on Friday that the producers have published a disclaimer along with the movie which specifically says that the film has fictionalised and is a dramatised version of events and that the film doesn’t claim accuracy or factuality of historic events.

President of Tamil Nadu Theatre and Multiplex Owners Association, M Subramaniam, confirmed the news that the few multiplexes that had shown the film had decided to withdraw it. He told PTI, “The film was only shown in a few multiplexes owned by pan-India groups, mostly PVR. Locally-owned multiplexes had already decided not to show the film, as it did not have any popular stars. In Coimbatore for instance, there were two shows so far — one on Friday and one on Saturday. Even those did not do well. Given that, theatres decided that it was not worth going through the threat of protests and such.”

Film trade analyst Sreedhar Pillai, who had earlier said that he was planning to watch the film on Sunday, tweeted on Sunday, “#Multiplexes stop screening of the controversial #TheKeralaStory from today (Sunday) all over #TamilNadu! They have cited “potential law and order issues and lack of reception from general public as reasons for the move!”

The Naam Tamilar Katchi (NTK) in Tamil Nadu headed by actor and director Seeman had staged a protest against the release of The Kerala Story in Chennai. Seeman said that if the film is screened in cinemas despite the protests, they would break the screens and theatres.

However, the opening two-day collections of the film looked decent. According to the figures shared by film trade analyst Taran Adarsh, the film had opened at ₹8 crore on Friday and improved to ₹11.22 crore on Saturday.

(With PTI inputs)