Who’s gunning for Shah Rukh Khan’s film?

There is something called marketing, and there is something called the art of countering it. Over the past few weeks, a series of emails, photo-shopped images and email jokes have been circulated to mock and ridicule actor Shah Rukh Khan’s latest film. People close to Shah Rukh believe that it is a clever marketing strategy to undercut the film when it was going on at full-steam in the theatres.

“There have been numerous jokes and emails circulated during the promotion of the movie, but as the film released the war heated up. The attention was now diverted to speculating the figures, hinting at the figures not being true. It has now come to point of being nasty,” says a member of SRK’s production house.

According to sources, people in SRK’s camp are upset with the new kind of word-of-mouth negative publicity of the film where “random people are coming up to the audience and asking them to go back rather than watch the film”. The trend was reported by fans from prominent multiplexes, where the film is still going strong and has been steeply priced for a higher return.

“Went to see Ra.One with no expectations. Was stopped by random people at Inox, discouraging us. Including a charming old lady,” tweets filmmaker Pritish Nandy, who also went to see the film.

Similar reports emerged from other prominent multiplexes in South and Central Mumbai, with people tweeting similar experiences.