Will Salman’s tweets work for Dabangg?

Ever since Salman Khan joined Twitter, he has recommended one film or another which have all gone on to become hits.

MUMBAI: Paul the Octopus created a worldwide stir with his accurate predictions for the World Cup matches. In Bollywood, Salman Khan is building up a reputation for perfect prophecies about a movie’s fate on the social networking site Twitter.

Ever since Khan joined Twitter, he has regularly recommended one film or another to his followers on the website, which have all gone on to become hits. It started with Raajneeti and although he had not seen it, Prakash Jha’s political thriller clicked at the box office.

Then came the actor’s tweets on I Hate Luv Storys. Lately, Khan has been gung-ho about Abhishek Sharma’s Tere Bin because producer Pooja Shetty is a pal.  His brother Arbaaz is now sure that Salman’s luck will work for their home production Dabangg. Without informing Arbaaz, Salman Khan has already started posting images and comments on Dabangg on the social networking site.

“If Salman’s recommendations worked for three films so far, why not for us? We seem to have a resident soothsayer. And I plan to make maximum use of him,” said Arbaaz.

“He has been going around taking pictures on the sets and putting them on Twitter. It shows his enthusiasm for the film. I am happy to have Salman on my side. Dabangg is a very important release for Salman; he has no other release this year. We hope to use his time for him to visit non-metropolitan cities for promotion, since Dabangg is set in a small north Indian town,” he said.

As for his uninterrupted luck on Twitter Arbaaz laughs: “I think more producers need to have Salman on their side, if the industry is to have more hits.”

Published in The Express Tribune, August 11^th, 2010.