It was smoothening to read the IANS news reported by Meenakshi Shedde, the India Consultant to the Berlin Film Festival, reporting from Berlin on February 12 that the online tickets of Shah Rukh Khan's movie My Name is Khan were sold out in five seconds in Berlin, Germany. She also reported that the film's tickets were being auctioned on e-Bay for 1,000 Euros (approximately Rs.60,000) each.
Shedde quotes Jenny Watkinson, who is assigned the 'Shah Rukh Khan Department' in the International Relations office of Dieter Kosslick, Berlin Film Festival director, as saying, “I've never seen anything like it. This year it's expected to be even bigger than in 2008 (during Om Shanti Om). The online tickets for ' My Name is Khan ' were sold out in five seconds.”
SRK’s film premieres in Berlin on Friday with a red carpet at the famous Berlinale Palast theatre on Potsdamer Platz. Shah Rukh Khan, Kajol and Karan Johar are in Berlin for the premiere of the film. This year India has a record number of nine feature films at the Berlin International Film Festival in the Berlinale, during the 60th anniversary of the Berlin Film Festival.
This report comes while there have been reports of widespread vandalism directed against theatres in Mumbai that are to screen My Name is Khan by Shiv Sena following Shah Rukh Khan’s opinion that Pakistani players should also participate in the Indian Premier League’s Twenty20 cricket matches, in spite of the presence of as much as five companies of the Maharashtra State Reserve Police Force deployed for security. The 63 cinema halls in Mumbai where the film is being released this Friday are threatened, though over 1000 protesters have been arrested as reported by the media.
