Fight To Whose Finish? | 6 September, 2019

By Surendra Bhatia

There is always something special about Mahatma Gandhi’s birthday. For one, on the day the Mahatma would have had Indians work the most, we have a national holiday, which makes the day most enticing for Bollywood. Any national holiday is special because that’s the day many families celebrate by catching up on movies, especially a non-festival holiday when demands of religious rituals or celebrations don’t take up time during the day. This year, Gandhi Jayanti is even more special because it falls on a Wednesday. For Bollywood, this means, the new film can cash in on Wednesday, a week day, and then continue its glorious run in the weekend too. And then the big bonanza! Before the week is over, another festival holiday trots along – Tuesday, October 8, when Dassera will be celebrated. So, effectively, the film releasing on October 2 gets one national holiday and one festival holiday in one week, three days of the weekend and it has to somehow manage just two weekdays of Thursday (not a problem as it is the day after release, and Monday, sandwiched between Sunday and Dassera). The following Wednesday and Thursday will also be included in the first week as it will be a 9-day week for the new film. A huge payoff may be predicted, going by the calendar… on such hopes, film release dates are decided almost a year in advance.

Accordingly, Aditya Chopra zeroed in on October 2, 2019 for the release of his mega-action movie, War, starring Hrithik Roshan, Tiger Shroff and Vaani Kapoor. War is, as its title denotes, an all-out action film about a soldier who is given the assignment to knock off his mentor who is suspected of having turned rogue, or gone over to the enemy side. It is not a spoiler to opine that Tiger will be after Hrithik Roshan who is unlikely to have turned rogue… he’s the main hero, so we will leave it at that. The real punch line is that the two best male dancers in the Hindi film industry will match their twinkle toes too and prove once and for all that not just their action but their dancing skills are also a draw with the audiences.

War was superbly and craftily scheduled for the October 2 release a long time back and slowly and steadily, other producers shifted their release to weeks earlier and weeks later in a bid to avoid clashing with a film that looked like a huge opener. For much of the early part of the year, it was kind of accepted that War would be the only film to release on Gandhi Jayanti. Why would anyone go up against it? Not worth the risk. But then, a surprise was sprung.

Already scheduled for Gandhi Jayanti release was a South Indian film — Syeraa Narasimha Reddy which is also dubbed in Hindi. It has mega star Chiranjeevi, and also Amitabh Bachchan in an important role. The film is about an Indian rebellion against the colonial rule, and has been made, like War, as a potential blockbuster. Despite being a South film and dubbed in Hindi, no one would ever write off Syeraa Narasimha Reddy after the huge, huge success of the two Bahubali films. If the scale of the South film is big enough and it has a strong storyline (which Syeraa Narasimha Reddy, as a film about patriotism surely must have), the appeal to audiences can be limitless. In fact, because much is expected of the film, Syeraa Narasimha Reddy was scheduled as the national holiday release.

But, of course, this has set up a clash between War and Syeraa Narasimha Reddy and has brought in a whole new series of issues. There is, naturally, a claim on cinema screens. The distributors of War must have booked a large number of cinemas and screens much in advance, and they are not likely to now become generous to the film of their rivals. But Syeraa Narasimha Reddy is not a small film either; its all-India distributor, Anil Thadani, has also made it clear that if multiplexes do not give him a good number of shows, he would be less than generous with them when his next big one is on release. Exhibitors will do their gig, trying to make the best of the two films to carry their cinemas through for a couple of weeks past Dassera, but it’s not going to be easy.

However, there is one thing common about the two films, that may stunt their chances against each other: action. Both films are set up as high-voltage action thrillers and it might boil down to, for audiences, about which film has more spectacular action sequences, and that might create a tipping point. The teasers and trailers of both make it obvious that their major selling point is action. While War seems like a mix of the spectacle of James Bond films and Bourne Identity, Syeraa Narasimha Reddy seems to be tailored on the epic scale of Lord Of The Rings; so the fight will be tense. With patriotism woven into it, Syeraa Narasimha Reddy is surely not going to be a film which can be walked over. On the other hand, Hrithik and Tiger may just make a deadly combination; and the stunts playing out in the trailer are certainly a novelty for Hindi film buffs.

There have been many instances when two mega films have released simultaneously and, instead of cutting into each other’s collections, have actually managed to feed off each other; if tickets are not available for one, the other gets the spillover. So, possibly, War will still pull in a large number of full-house shows in the first week, and Syeraa Narasimha Reddy will still create the ripples that it probably deserves to. Of course, it would have been a lot simpler if one was an action film and the other, a romantic or family drama film. That would have helped audiences go by the choice of the genre they would want to take in first. But, in this instance, that option doesn’t exist: it is either this action film or the other, or, hopefully, both. So, even family audiences would just have to grin and bear it.

It is very tempting to believe that the original Hindi film will, of course, get prioritised, by exhibitors and audiences. After all, Hrithik and Tiger are Hindi film heroes and while Hrithik is an established A-lister, Tiger has had his Baaghi and other successes. Possibly, this is how it will play out on October 2 and the weeks to follow. The one big thing going with Hindi audiences for the other film — Syeraa Narasimha Reddy — is actually the booming opening the Bahubali films had taken for their Hindi dubbed versions. And, more recently, Saaho (Hindi version) also opened to bumper houses. That is not forgotten by audiences and if the word gets around that Syeraa Narasimha Reddy provides the entertainment and scale of the Bahubali films, audiences will not hesitate to lap it up…

Some minor aspects too might influence audiences. The atmosphere in India is tense after the hullabaloo Pakistan has tried to create over Kashmir, giving the feeling that a war between the neighbours is imminent; it is not known but, possibly, the enemy in War is Pakistan; if so, the film might just feed on the country’s present emotions. Patriotism, on the other hand, never goes out of fashion, so there is that too.

It is good that a Fast And Furious edition is not scheduled for release on the birth anniversary of the man of peace, accepted across the globe as the most deserving person for the Nobel Peace Prize, which he didn’t get. Else, War and Syeraa Narasimha Reddy would have been hunting around for fresh dates a few weeks away from the Mahatma’s birthday! For, the aforementioned Hollywood film would’ve made the producers of both the 2nd October releases think twice about the date.