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Happy Diwali at last for cinema owners
Updated On: 09 November, 2021 07:10 AM IST | Mumbai | Mohar Basu
With Sooryavanshi raking in Rs 77 crore over the weekend, makers and trade say film’s success proves big screens will have takers despite OTT boom
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Sooryavanshi was originally slated for a March 2020 release
Over the past 19 months as OTT platforms gained prominence in India, the popular notion was that they may sound the death knell for theatres. All it took was a weekend and a big-budget Hindi film to dispel the idea. After a long wait, it was a glorious Diwali for Bollywood as Akshay Kumar’s Sooryavanshi amassed Rs 77.08 crore over the opening weekend. The figures are all the more encouraging when taken into account that Maharashtra theatres are operating at 50 per cent occupancy.
Shibasish Sarkar, chairman and CEO of IMAC, and former CEO, Reliance Entertainment, which produced the film, says this is the industry’s collective success. “Holding off the film’s release was a tough call. Every day posed a new challenge and a different uncertainty. This wasn’t a case of simple math where all we had to figure was whether the film would make profit or not. There was always a worry whether theatres would be functional and safe for people to visit. In the case of Sooryavanshi, the producers, actors, and director [Rohit Shetty] watched the film many times over, and believed that the movie would draw the audience back to [halls],” states Sarkar.
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