Show of strength

Jasmine Singh

Elante Mall, Chandigarh, Sunday, the number of people standing outside Audi 2 playing Punjabi film Kaptaan clearly outnumbered the ones standing outside Audi 7 playing much-talked about Bollywood film, Sarbjit. What follows is even more interesting...A Punjabi film, Kaptaan, gets 76 shows in Chandigarh while Sarbjit settles for 70 shows. Interesting, for the scene is being replicated across Punjab as well!

There are some big budget Punjabi films, which are getting more shows than the hyped Bollywood products. A sign of ‘Here we come’ or ‘You can’t ignore us’, Punjabi films are now giving Hindi films a run for their money, in Punjab at least!

Last year Angrej opened along with Drishyam. Angrej had 25 -30 more shows at leading theatres as compared to the Hindi film. As for Diljit Dosanjh-starrer Ambarsariya that opened with Rocky Handsome, starring John Abraham in the lead, Ambarsariya again managed to get far more shows (83-84)than Rocky Handsome (45-47). Munish Sahni, a leading distributor in Punjab, is wary of this shift.

“We are seeing that good Punjabi films, the ones with leading actors, have managed to pull more crowd as compared to the Hindi films released on the same day, which is why their shows are increased after a good opening at any multiplex.”

In fact, for the number of shows for Amrinder Gill and Sargun Mehta-starrer Angrej was increased from 9 to15 in Chandigarh looking at the popularity. Says filmmaker Hardeep Sandhu, “This rule doesn’t apply to all Punjabi films. There are many that don’t get a single show, but some with big stars are managing to get more shows than the Hindi films. This also means that our stars are as big as Bollywood ones and it also points towards the fact that we are making better and bigger films.”

These days, the number of screens that are given to any film are decided after at least three days of observing, where the number of shows at a mall are increased or decreased looking at the popularity of the film.

Chandra Mohan Sharma, area manager, PVR, Chandigarh and Punjab, shares how they had to increase the number of shows for Angrej in Punjab and Haryana because of public demand. “We had to do the same for Jatt & Juliet and Chaar Sahibzaade too.”