Tropical Cyclone Gaja formed over the Bay of Bengal, and will soon make landfall in Tamil Nadu, on the southern coast near Nagapattinam. This is even as the 2.0 storm brews over social media, with Akshay Kumar and Karan Johar tweeting posters of the film – one of which reads ‘A Storm Is Coming’.
A storm is coming! #2Point0 this 29th November in cinemas. Are you ready? @2Point0Movie @DharmaMovies @LycaProductions pic.twitter.com/SU6l2tw1lK
— Akshay Kumar (@akshaykumar) November 14, 2018
Whether Kumar and Johar anticipated the storm and came up with that line, or it was simply a caption used for their promotional campaign which became a jinx – we’ll never know. What we do know is that the team is pulling all stops to get the word around about their movie.
It began with the release of their first-look poster for 2.0 which had the protagonist and antagonist locking horns.
2.0 110c
This was followed by yet another poster that came ahead of the teaser launch and featured an eagle that would come to represent the movie in future.
This teaser and trailer released subsequently. But the makers also teased the audience with behind-the-scenes footage from the movie, a practice many filmmakers have followed in recent time, especially with bigger stars in the cast and greater CGI work. “Hey, we’ve spent this much on our film. Come, watch the movie at least for that,” may just be one of the reasons. And it seems to work at least with some of the audience, who rush to theatres to see on screen the result of what happened behind the scenes – like with Thugs Of Hindostan.
Barring Baahubali and Padmaavat, most other movies that have boasted of huge budgets, like Tiger Zinda Hai, Race 3, Ra.One and Blue, have in fact only been disappointments.
One could believe Shankar wasn’t thinking along these lines when he asked media and film lovers to support 2.0 for its use of technology. But come to think of the immense negative reaction to both the trailer and teaser among audiences, and his request can’t be entirely genuine.
The movie, born out of a collaboration of stalwarts like Rajinikanth, Shankar, A.R.Rahman, and Akshay Kumar, was also quickly lapped up by the film fraternity following the trailer’s negative response. Rajinikanth, on the other hand, only said that the movie would be a ‘super-duper’ hit.
Announced two years ago, 2.0, the story of which has been alluded through the posters to contain a metaphorical storm, will come out this month end. As we wait to see what records and numbers this movie is likely to break, there’s another storm brewing in the South called Gaja. It was first reported two weeks back. And this evening, Tamil Nadu’s coastal areas between Cuddalore and Pamban are bracing themselves to face its wrath.
Meanwhile, here’s the 2.0 trailer:
