Geethanjali is one of the most awaited Malayalam movies of the year, because of the fact that it is a spinoff of 'Manichithratazhu', an all time classic. When the shooting began the idea was to release the movie during Pooja holidays [Oct 11th] and they were shooting with multiple units too. Then it was pushed to Nov 1st to get a solo, wide release.
But once the release date of Diwali movies were announced the film got again pushed ahead by two weeks. Geethanjali will now be releasing worldwide on November 14th. When Nov 1 was decided Only Krrish 3 was supposed to have a big release on that date, it was later that Tamil films - Ajith's Arrambam & Karthi's All in all Azhagu Raja joined the race. Both of these film were supposed to have arrived in different dates, but one got postponed and other preponed.
Other language movies [Hindi & Tamil] have a good market in Kerala cause majority of the people understand the language [If Telugu undubbed movies release with subtitles even those will have audience]. So theaters and distributors have made a lot of investments in these projects. So if a Mohanlal starrer gets released on that date it will eat into the screen count and opening week collections of other language movies. So it was idea suggested by Exhibitors federation too postpone the release as Geethanjali is also to benefit from the movie. Since 90% of the life time collections of most of the OL movies comes in the first week (or may be two weeks) it will be easy for Geethanjali to have a wide release on 14th.
So a win-win situation for both parties. But there was no other way possible for makers of Geethanjali than to postpone. Remember in 2011 when similar situation arose the exhibitors called for strike on some unnecessary reason to support Velayudham, 7am Arivu & Ra.One which were much bigger films than this year's OL Diwali releases.
