English Titles: Are Small Films Paying the Price?

Titles are the most powerful weapons in Film Promotion. They are the identifiers of films and the primary target of any film unit is to familiarize their titles to the masses and the audience. There have been instances where filmmakers try craze titles. Upendra once had a symbol as his film title. The unique strategy helped the movie get popular with the masses.

A film with JD Chakravarthy released in 1998 without title. The movie was referred to as “Peru Leni Cinema”. It also worked big time for the film’s publicity.

Even though, there are no such radical experiments in recent years. Directors like Trivikram had some unconventional titles. Even though they sounded odd initially, since they are for star films, people got used to them quickly.

However, in recent times, small films with English titles are coming more frequently and there are doubts if they are failing to reach to the audience.

Tiruveer’s film, The Great Pre-Wedding Show, Gunasekhar’s Euphoria, and Santosh Sobhan’s Couple Friendly have opted for English Titles. All the three films have got not-so-expected results at the Box Office.

The Great Pre-Wedding Show has got very good talk but then, its box office potential was not reached. Euphoria had issues in the second half but it did not get minimum traction. Couple Friendly had decent first weekend but its potential is largely untapped.

So among many factors that impacted the reach of the films, the question is if English Titles also played spoilsport?

When the writer of this article asked the same question to director Gunasekhar, he said you are grossly under-estimating the intellect of the audience.

With the advent of OTT and Internet Revolution due to Jio, it is a fact that the masses are more informed than how they were previously. But then, it still appears like they were still not prepared for the complicated English Titles.

It is also true that the BO office performance of these films should not be completely attributed to the titles. But then, every single leak matters in arresting a bigger leak. For big films, it may not be a big problem but for small films, it is definitely a big issue.

So, the makers should definitely take note of it while naming their films in future.