As soon as the official statement was made by the CM through his official social media handle, filmmakers and producers immediately jumped on to lock the release dates of their respective films. ETimes spoke to Induri, who too blocked the release date of his next ambitious project, ’83’ within a few hours of the announcement. “We are very excited for the release of ‘83′ as we have been waiting for almost two years now,” he shares his excitement. Accordingly, director Kabir Khan’s ’83’ is scheduled to hit the big screens during Christmas this year
We asked him the reason why so many Bollywood producers reacted in a frenzy, announcing dozens of movies and release dates within a span of 48 hours after the Govt’s announcement and Vishnu reasons, “Mumbai sector contributes 30 to 45 percent of the total box office collections of a film. So people have been waiting for Mumbai theatres to reopen and once that’s done, people would want to announce their dates so that no one else will come and clash with them at the box office. Makers have been waiting for two years now. Films which were supposed to release in April 2020 were holding the release for so long that they made quick announcements, I think, wanting to block their dates, so there is no clash with other releases.”
Induri speaks about how the reopening of theatres in Maharashtra from October will change the existing exhibition model, namely, will OTT platforms become second preference over theatres for producers? He affirms, “Theatres will always be the first preference over OTT platforms for every filmmaker. In the absence of theatres, the majority of the producers opted for the OTT platforms but normally it’s always theatrical first.”
He is pretty sure about the audience returning to big screens as they used to during pre-Covid times. “It might take time, but the audience will definitely come back to theatres,” he says confidently and signs off.
