Tamil cinema ever since its inception has dished out the maximum number of films in Indian cinema and the leading men have achieved demi-god status only here with two of them (one of the fairer sex) even became rulers. There has always been a healthy competition at the box office and in the early MGR - Sivaji era their films were not only pitted against each other sometimes their own films had to fight against one another to become hits.

The trend continued in the Rajini-Kamal era as every Friday there were a number of releases with top heroes vying for the attention of the fans and audiences. Any major festival there would be upto fourteen or more films providing fans with variety entertainment starring Rajini, Kamal, Vijayakanth, Sathyaraj, Prabhu and Karthik alongwith Visu, Bhagyaraj, Bharathiraja, Balachander and Balu Mahendra give them a tough fight. All the films that were good had good runs and made their respective fans happy giving them a variety of entertainment in the cinema halls.

In the second decade of the new millennium, the mindset changed after corporate entry into Kollywood bringing with it the monopolistic attitude. This dictated that the big stars and studios could grab a couple of weeks to themselves and then do chest thumping of setting new records. The biggest advantage for producers was that they had more chances of recovering their money on a rank bad film but the biggest disadvantage was filmgoers started getting out of the habit of watching movies. Reason, they may not like the hero who is forced on them for a couple of weeks and their favorite hero wont arrive for the next year or so.

December 2018 first tested the waters as Vijay Sethupathi's 'Seethakathi', Sivakarthikeyan's 'Kanaa', Jayam Ravi's 'Adanga Maru' and Vishnu Vishal's 'Silukkuvarpatti Singam' locked horns and each one got what it deserved in return and nobody complained.

When Superstar Rajinikanth's 'Petta' and Thala Ajith's 'Viswasam' confirmed to battle it out for Pongal misinformed industry trackers and their blissfully ignorant followers started whining about how this spelled disaster as each film will eat into the others collections. Ten days later the same lot are hailing the masterstroke of Sun and KJR for marching together to box office goldmine.

The fact is both 'Petta' and 'Viswasam' are flawed films which depend on their star power to navigate them to safety. The competition drummed up enough curiosity for the reluctant moviegoer too to watch both the films. Sun and KJR outdoing each other by announcing gigantic box office numbers, Income Tax Department notwithstanding is the biggest promotion strategy from both to further swell their purses. The outcome of this win-win tussle is that the future thinking will change for the better and more variety will be on offer to the Tamil cinema buff every festive or nonfestival time.