From Monday, December 23, to Monday, January 6, the big stars came out for five feature film trailer launches. The starry mahurats of the last millennium, when a film would go on the floors, have given way to trailer launches where the first interaction with the cast and crew happens only a few weeks before release.
Usually, the trailer is screened for the media in a cinema hall, a day before the public sees it, followed by the actors and the director doing a Q&A. With filmmakers wanting more eyeballs, there is an attempt to make the event as unique as possible. Like Karan Johar released the trailer of Yodha, a mid-air thriller, on a chartered flight from Mumbai to Ahmedabad.
Sonu Sood, dressed like an actor out of Men In Black, went conventional when he had a pre-Christmas trailer launch of Fateh, his first as a director. It is the norm to start the event one to two hours after the time on the invitation. Like Salman Khan strolled in over two hours late and lolled around before deigning to step into the hall for the trailer launch of Kisi Ka Bhai Kisi Ki Jaan. That energy-minus casualness of taking everybody for granted was reflected in the film too.
At the trailer launch of Fateh, Jacqueline Fernandez turned up three hours late, well after Sonu had decided that enough was enough and began the event without her. The whisper was that Jacqueline was afraid there’d be questions on conman and extortionist Sukesh Chandrashekhar who showers loving messages and expensive gifts on her from Tihar jail. Sonu gamely took all questions — too bad the film couldn’t live up to his promise that he’d deliver a film “You’ve never seen before”. But at least he had the courage to have a press show the evening before it was released.
On Saturday, January 4, the arrival of Ram Charan of RRR fame in Mumbai was the big draw at the trailer release of his ₹350 crore film Game Changer. This time, heroine Kiara Advani was missing — reportedly unwell. The proverbial “good news” in the offing? With screams of “Anna” from crazy fans, it wasn’t a media-only event but Ram Charan did meet us after it. Inviting everybody to his Hyderabad home and saying he’d done so many things in this film that he couldn’t pick out one Naatu Naatu moment from it, he also said that dad Chiranjeevi had seen his film and given it three thumbs up(s). But Ram chickened out of showing his over-expensive Game Changer to the media before release. Wise, because it gets a thumbs-down for being an overlong, overloud game played without finesse.
Going against the norm was 4am man Akshay Kumar who made everybody scramble out of their beds on Sunday the 5th as he insisted on starting the trailer launch of Sky Force almost on time. Missing again were heroines Nimrat Kaur and Sara Ali Khan. The same evening, Shahid Kapoor came an hour and a half late for the teaser launch of Devaa that took place in full view of the public on Carter Road. Naturally, no Q&A.
On Monday afternoon, we met Ajay Devgn with newcomers Rasha Thadani, Raveena Tandon and Anil Thadani’s self-assured young daughter and Ajay’s sister’s son Aaman Devgan (who takes his mom’s surname) for the trailer launch of Azaad. In the confines of Mehboob Studios, it was strictly only for the media with all of them game for a Q&A. The lovely moment, now all over the Internet, was the arrival of Azaad the majestic horse on stage, and Ajay showing his son Yug how to stroke the animal gently and fearlessly.
The dress code of black for a 1.30pm event made “horse sense” when the cast and director Abhishek Kapoor posed with Azaad sporting a gleaming black coat.
All this topped with Hrithik Roshan’s party for the media gave a starry start to 2025. But the question remains, will the box office be impressed with only star presence?