Kangana Ranaut's latest film, "Tejas," hit theatres on October 27, 2023, but its box office performance and audience reception have been underwhelming. The movie centres around the journey of Tejas Gill, an Air Force pilot portrayed by Ranaut. Unfortunately, "Tejas" struggled to attract viewers and faced negative reviews, prompting theatre owners to cancel shows in its first week due to lacklustre ticket sales nationwide.
According to Bollywood Hungama, Kirtibhai T Vaghasia, who operates The Friday Cinema multiplex in Surat, shed light on why he had to make the difficult decision to cancel all 15 shows of "Tejas" in his theatre.
"Not a single show of Tejas has been played in my theatre. There were zero bookings. On Friday, I allocated an entire auditorium to 'Tejas' and planned to run six shows as it's just a 2-hour film. However, due to the absence of an audience, I reduced it to three shows on Saturday," he said.
He explained that they typically have a policy where a show is played only if there are a minimum of 10 patrons. For "Tejas," they assumed at least 4-5 viewers might attend some of the shows, but this hope was dashed, leading to a repeat of the situation on Sunday. Consequently, they were forced to replace "Tejas" shows with Vijay's "Leo" at his theatre.
According to FPJ, Manoj Desai, the proprietor of G7 Multiplex in Mumbai, reported that they managed to draw only 100 viewers for some shows, and for the rest, the numbers were even lower. The film's performance has been so underwhelming that Vishek Chauhan, owner of Roopbani Cinema in Bihar, branded "Tejas" an "unmitigated disaster." He revealed that, for the first time in 2023, morning shows at his theatre were cancelled due to zero ticket sales, with only 20–30 people attending the subsequent shows.