It is said, whatever happens, happens for the best. Well, that’s what some owners and booking agents of single-screen cinemas in Delhi-U.P. must be feeling today.
Warner Brothers, which released Fast & Furious 9: The Fast Saga (English and Hindi dubbed) this week (on Thursday, its paid previews were held all through the day), wanted cinemas to pay it MGs. Many cinemas declined to pay the Minimum Guarantees demanded by Warner. Exasperated when Warner was unwilling to relent, the cinema owners and bookers decided to screen Shang-Chi And The Legend Of The Ten Rings which also opened this week. Unlike F9, Shang-Chi, a Marvel film, did not open on Thursday but it released today (3rd September).
Anyway, the owners and bookers were not happy to let go of F9 because, after all, Fast & Furious is a very popular and successful franchise. On the other hand, even though Shang-Chi is a Marvel film, the fact is that it has Chinese actors in many of the lead roles. So even while they had mentally decided to screen Shang-Chi in all the shows, they attempted to still make the Warner people see reason and not be “unreasonable”. The Warner people did see reason and finally relented, agreeing to not insist on MGs. But that was not the end of the story.
Now, Warner wanted all the shows for F9. In the alternative, the Hollywood studio wanted more number of shows than given to Shang-Chi per day. But, unfortunately for Warner, several of the cinemas, which were willing to happily play F9 without giving MGs, had already opened the advance booking for Shang-Chi, often in daily 3 shows of the 5 shows. This did not go down well with Warner. Although Warner realised that it would not be possible for the cinemas to refund the advance booking monies received, it did not relent this time. As a result, these cinemas were forced to screen Shang-Chi in all the five shows. Of course, the cinemas still regretted that they could not screen the brand-heavy F9.
But the initial of Shang-Chi today is so good that the cinema owners and bookers, who took the risk of forgoing F9, are now actually thanking their stars that although per force, they opted for Shang-Chi and not F9. It may be added here that the collections of Shang-Chi are better than those of F9 at many places. Some of these cinemas have reported that Shang-Chi has collected four times of what F9 has collected today!
Sometimes, Providence plays such an important role that one is just left speechless! It was in the destiny of these cinemas to earn more — and it is happening!!