The reason: beating the heat or making the most of an extended weekend; gazing at the stars or giving in to mall mania. The result: footfall frenzy at the multiplexes.

The May Day rally at Shahid Minar may not have drawn more than 4,000 people but INOX (Forum), on Elgin Road, registered a record footfall of 5,950 on Monday.

?We have broken the previous ticket sales record set during Puja 2005,? said general manager Vikas Syal. ?Apart from the post-exam break and the extreme heat, the reason for the rush was the extended weekend coming into play after a long time.?

If INOX on Elgin Road did great business over the weekend, INOX at Salt Lake, too, was no less busy. The City Centre cineplex notched up an impressive 4,572 patron count on Sunday, which went up to 4,929 on Monday. Not far away, 89 Cinemas, Swabhumi, was scripting its own success story, with the footfall crossing 4,000 on May Day.

The plex at the other end of the EM Bypass was not to miss out on the action, either. Fame (Hiland Park) might have had something of a dry run since opening in December, but Monday saw a footfall flood pushing the count at the counter beyond the 3,500 mark. ?May Day was one of our best days. The reason we recorded high business had a lot to do with the Metropolis Mall being a chosen holiday destination,? revealed a spokesperson for the Mumbai plex player.

The filmi fact also is that the extended weekend coincided with a clutch of new releases (see box).

?There had been a drought in the earlier weeks and only Malamaal Weekly had worked at the city box office since Rang De Basanti scored big,? explained 89 Cinemas vice-president Prashant Srivastava. ?But suddenly last Friday, there were three great new options in Gangster, Darna Zaroori Hai and The Mistress of Spices.?

If all these three new releases ? having everyone from biggies like Amitabh Bachchan (Darna?) and Aishwarya Rai (Mistress?) to rookies like Shiney Ahuja and Randeep Hooda ? were meant for adult viewing, the children had their fair share of the plex pie.

The Hollywood releases Ice Age 2 and The Pink Panther drew in the kids, while the ?family crowd? went for ?clean entertainment? in the Bollywood potboilers Humko Deewana Kar Gaye and Pyare Mohan.

And as the mercury rises, the multiplex action promises to hot up even further, with blockbusters from both Bollywood and Hollywood.

If May will see the likes of Fanaa (Aamir-Kajol) and The Da Vinci Code (Tom Hanks) hitting the theatres, June will be the month of the supermen. A masked Hrithik Roshan will hop, skip and jump over many a Singapore building in the Koi? Mil Gaya sequel Krrish, while Brandon Routh will try to carry off the cape that belonged to Christopher Reeves in Superman Returns.