New Tolly releases withstand election season challenge
Times of India | 15 May 2024
Kolkata: With Feluda’s return to the big screen getting houseful shows and Anjan Dutt’s tribute to Mrinal Sen on OTT receiving accolades from all quarters, Bengali cinema’s craze seems to have countered the poll fever and broken the jinx of the first quarter. Industry insiders claim that one among the four Bengali films currently running is poised to become a sleeper hit.
Actor-turned-director Mansi Sinha’s ‘Eta Amader Golpo’ (EAG) — a film about an elderly Punjabi man and a Bengali widow falling in love — released on April 26. Distributor Satadeep Saha believes the response in Bengal during the peak campaign season indicates that a good film with even an unusual plot can get the cash registers jingling. “Heatwave, IPL and elections had no negative impact of this film at the box-office. Bengali viewers are not conservative. They are ready to watch an unconventional story. I am confident of returning the production cost from the theatrical sales itself,” Saha said.
Joydeep Mukherjee, who has the lease for Star, said that the film did not even get theatres for release. But the craze increased with word-of-mouth publicity. This proves that without superstars in the cast and great promotions for a film, there is still an audience for good Bengali cinema. This film, running in the third week, managed to get two houseful shows on Sunday. I am sure the response to ‘Dabaru’ – a film inspired by the life of a chess grandmaster – will soon get the same response,” Mukherjee said.
Naveen Choukhani of Navina is also happy with the response to EAG. “The numbers are good. Sandip Ray’s ‘Nayan Rahasya’ also had houseful shows on Sunday. It had a slow start on Friday but the figures jumped hugely on Saturday. We had a houseful show on Sunday. This just proves that the Feluda franchise works at the Bengal box-office,” Choukhani said.
Meanwhile, Dutt told TOI the feedback to his ‘Chaalchitra Ekhon’ indicates that the poll mania has no impact if the content of a film is good. Incidentally, this is the first time a Bengali film has been released simultaneously on the big screen and the OTT platform. “It was a conscious decision to release it this way. Over the years, I realised that my audience had shifted out of Kolkata. Since I released the film on the web, I am getting a huge response from people all across the globe. The election fever has no impact on the time they will take out to watch my film on OTT,” Dutt said.
The barrage of posts about the film on social media indicates a good number of people — some untouched by the movie’s publicity machinery — are now willing to give Bengali cinema a chance. Soumya Mukherjee, COO of Hoichoi, believes this simultaneous release is “a big step in entertainment”.