This week’s new release, Hollywood film Uncharted, has opened to dismal houses at most of the places in India. The dull opening holds good for the original as well as its dubbed versions.
While some may attribute the poor start to the scenario in the country in view of the COVID-19 virus, some fact-checking which Information did can serve to be an eye-opener.
Sony Pictures, the all-India distributors of Columbia’s film, sent the publicity materials to the cinemas as late as on Tuesday and Wednesday of this week — which means, just two to three days before its theatrical release. The quantity of posters which the cinemas received could make the Hollywood studio hang its head in shame! Believe it or go to Hollywood, each cinema was given just five to ten posters of the film!!
Time was when a cinema was allotted around 100 to 200, even as many as 500 posters of a film. The cinema then used to put up these posters on the exterior as well as in the lobby. The remaining posters were pasted on the walls of buildings in the area around the cinema, which could be in a radius of one or two kilometres. Even if one were to consider that street publicity by the cinemas is no longer in vogue, what does an exhibitor do with just five posters?
In the good old days, producers and distributors used to take personal interest in the publicity requirements of every cinema. The bottom line used to be that the film’s banners, hoardings and posters should be seen all around. But with corporatisation, the personal touch has gone. With clueless MBAs now running corporate production houses, the personal interest is gone out of the window. Many of these MBAs don’t even know whether the optimum number of posters required for a film is 5 or 500!
Someone in every corporate set-up definitely needs to give the MBAs and degree holders some basic lessons on the business of films and how it is done. Otherwise, such blunders will become the norm.