Tanda Putera bombs at the box office, now playing in smaller cinema halls
(TMI) – “Its detractors label it an Umno film. So why was it that it was not filled with Umno’s three million members in the first four days of screening? This would have smashed the box office with earnings of millions of ringgit!” Shuhaimi said.
The controversial movie Tanda Putera has bombed at the box office in the first week and has been reduced to being screened in cinemas with smaller seating capacity, officials said.
The film that contained questionable scenes of the May 13 race riots opened nationwide last Thursday and only collected RM500,000 from ticket sales from opening day until Monday.
“This is shameful and sad,” said Finas Compulsory Screening Scheme (CSS) chairman Datuk Mustapha Maarof, pointing out that the film production cost was RM4.8 million.
The CSS sets out the rules for Malaysian cinema houses to give prominence to local productions.
Mustapha told The Malaysian Insider the box office takings from Tanda Putera was “very poor” when compared to another local production, KL Zombie, which racked in RM3 million over the same period.
“Tanda Putera is a good film but the taste of viewers vary. The film now has to be shown in smaller cinemas because of the poor response.
“And this is not due to the controversy it has attracted, but to the genre which is not up to viewers’ interests,” he told The Malaysian Insider.
When asked about the losses the government incurred due to the poor response, Mustapha said historical films cannot be viewed only in terms of profit and loss. Instead, he said, every country needs an identity.
He said Datin Paduka Shuhaimi Baba had directed the film well but added that she may have injected more fiction into it as she did not personally experience the May 13 riots in 1969.
Read more at: http://www.themalaysianinsider.com/malaysia/article/tanda-putera-bombs-at-the-box-office-now-playing-in-smaller-cinema-halls
