Variety

After more than a year, audiences return to theatres to watch Bengali films this festive season

PTI Kolkata | Updated on October 23, 2021

Cinema theatres and chains witness back to back houseful shows for the first few days

Several Bengali films released during the Durga Puja festival did brisk business, industry sources said.

They said that while ‘Golondaaj’, starring Dev, was still registering houseful shows, Jeet-starrer ‘Bazi’, ‘Bony’ having Koel Mallick and Parambrata Chatterjee in lead roles, ‘FIR’ of Ankush and ‘Shororipu Two Jotugriho’ featuring Saswata Chatterjee also did well during the period of October 10 to 20.

Houseful shows

A spokesperson of the producers of Golondaaj told PTI on Friday, “With 50 per cent occupancy in theatres, Golondaaj becomes the first film in Eastern India to earn around ₹3 crore at the box office till Thursday — Laxmi puja and the day after.”

A majority of cinema theatres and chains of Kolkata have witnessed back to back houseful shows consecutively for the first 4–5 days, she claimed.

Also see: Martin Scorsese and Istvan Szabo to be awarded Satyajit Ray Lifetime Achievement Award at IFFI

Satadeep Saha, of distributors SSR Cinemas and owner of local Ajanta multiplex in the city, said Golondaaj, Baazi, Bony “all did very good business in theatres and while Golondaaj obviously fetched much higher box office returns due to the mount and hype surrounding the film, Baazi was also a hit among the cinegoers.”

Saha claimed the audience turnout was three times higher than last year and appealed to the State government and Centre to allow 100 per cent occupancy at theatres.

Also see: PVR set to add 90-100 screens in the next 12 months

While neither Saha nor producers of the two films were willing to quote any figure, a trade analyst said Bony did around one fourth of the business of Golondaaj.

Baazi had around ₹35–40 lakh collection, the analyst said, adding that FIR and Shororipu Two, which had decent one week runs in theatres, did around 10 per cent of the business of Golondaaj.

Back to theatres

Dev told PTI, “I am glad that people are back to the theatres for celebrating cinema. In this pandemic situation for last two years, it was very difficult to bring people and we are very happy as a team that we are able to bring back the audience to the theatres.

“I hope that this continues for other films also, so that the pre-pandemic era of watching films makes its way back again.”

Published on October 23, 2021

Follow us on Telegram, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube and Linkedin. You can also download our Android App or IOS App.

  1. Comments will be moderated by The Hindu Business Line editorial team.
  2. Comments that are abusive, personal, incendiary or irrelevant cannot be published.
  3. Please write complete sentences. Do not type comments in all capital letters, or in all lower case letters, or using abbreviated text. (example: u cannot substitute for you, d is not 'the', n is not 'and').
  4. We may remove hyperlinks within comments.
  5. Please use a genuine email ID and provide your name, to avoid rejection.

You May Also Like