Sardar 2 and Mandaadi put two Tamil films in Malaysia's top ten, at 59 and 38 cinemas

Two Tamil films opened in Malaysia on the same Thursday, and both are in the country's top ten. Malay Mail's chart for the weekend of 11 to 13 September has Sardar 2 at No. 5 and Mandaadi at No. 6, above Spider-Man: Brand New Day in its seventh week and above Insidious. This site's listings for the week to 25 September have Sardar 2 at 59 cinemas with 457 sessions and Mandaadi at 38 cinemas with 529 sessions, and the two together are on at every chain in the country, TSR included.

Sardar 2: the spy's origin

The chains' synopsis sets Sardar 2 around Inspector Vijay, who takes on his most dangerous mission when a threat called the Black Dagger endangers national security, and the film reveals how the legendary spy Sardar came to be. Karthi leads, with S. J. Suryah, Malavika Mohanan and Rajisha Vijayan, and P. S. Mithran directs, as he did the first Sardar; The Numbers lists it as an action thriller and an origin story, released in India on 10 September with limited runs in the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand the same day. It is rated 16 here and runs 180 minutes, three full hours, which is worth knowing before picking a session.

Its Malaysian spread is the Tamil audience's map. Selangor has 131 of its sessions this week, Penang 85 and Perak 67, across nine states, and it plays at 22 TGV cinemas, 15 GSC cinemas and 12 FST cinemas, with Mega, Paragon, Amerin and TSR making up the rest. Seventeen sessions are in TGV's Beanieplex halls; the rest are standard.

Mandaadi: a boat race on the coast

Mandaadi is the smaller and the busier of the two: fewer cinemas, more sessions. The chains describe a fishing captain who brings his knowledge of the sea to a traditional boat race on the Tamil Nadu coast during a festival, leading a six-man crew against the other boats. Soori leads, with Suhas, Mahima Nambiar and Sathyaraj, and Mathimaran Pugazhendhi directs; The Numbers lists it as an adventure released in Tamil, Telugu, Hindi, Malayalam and Kannada. It is rated 16 and runs 153 minutes.

Its 529 sessions are concentrated where the audience is: 193 in Selangor, 91 in Kuala Lumpur and 65 in Penang, across eight states, at 12 FST cinemas, 12 GSC cinemas, 10 TGV cinemas and a handful at Mega, Amerin and TSR. FST, the chain with cinemas in Penang, Perak and the smaller towns, carries both films at 12 of its cinemas, which is why a Tamil film's reach here rarely matches the Klang Valley-first pattern of the Hollywood releases.

The numbers abroad, for scale

The Numbers' tables show how unusual Malaysia is for these films. Sardar 2 had taken $57,877 in the United Kingdom from 75 cinemas by 17 September, $21,734 in Australia from 41 and $1,495 in New Zealand from 20; Mandaadi had $28,212 in Australia from 19 cinemas and $2,505 in New Zealand from 17. Malaysia does not appear in those tables at all, and neither does India's own total, yet by this site's count Sardar 2 is on at 59 Malaysian cinemas, close to the British figure, and a top-ten film here by Malay Mail's chart. The Malaysian Tamil audience is large enough to put two films in the national top ten in the same week, and neither is likely to be reported anywhere else.

Booking

Both films are in their second week, and the Thursday reshuffle usually costs a Tamil film its GSC and TGV halls first while FST holds. The Sardar 2 page and the Mandaadi page list every cinema and session, ordered from the Klang Valley outward, and the showtimes page puts each cinema's Sardar 2 times side by side. Sessions are refreshed from each chain every hour; the cinema's own booking page is the final word.