MUMBAI: According to UTV Motion Pictures, Mira Nair's The Namesake has logged in one of the highest per print average collections for an Indian crossover film.

The film has generated a cumulative per print average gross box office (GBO) of Rs 10,51,570 in only four weeks of release, with a Gross India Box Office of Rs 66.2 million (Rs 6.62 crore) for the week ended 27 Apr 2007. The Namesake is the first Indian crossover film to be co-produced by an Indian company. UTV Motion Pictures and Fox Searchlight are the joint producers of the film.

The company opted for an innovative distribution strategy by opening the film with a phase-wise release across the country, with just 48 prints in the top 10 cities in the first seven days, rather than going by the conventional distribution wisdom of maximum revenues with maximum prints.

This strategy has helped the film sustain presence across markets for more than four weeks, says the company.

UTV executive vice president marketing, distribution and syndication Siddharth Roy Kapur says, "We were confident of the product and banked on positive reviews and word of mouth to drive demand for the film. The strategy worked. Buoyed by the tremendous response of the audience, in the second week, we added 12 prints along with new territories and did the same print and territory expansion in week three. This enabled word of mouth to build and occupancy levels to be maximised. This also kept print costs low and optimised the realisation per print, while ensuring that supply of tickets always matched demand and did not exceed it by too high a margin."

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