There should be a balance in the way small budget movies are allotted screens as they need more time to breathe in theatres, says filmmaker Vikramaditya Motwane.
Hailing the success of Vikrant massey-starrer "12th Fail", the director said the movie can be an interesting case study for how a small to mid-budget movie can grow in numbers if it stays in theatres and builds up on positive word of mouth. "'12th Fail' is a great case study of a film that can be commercially and critically successful. For any movie to work in a theatre beyond the opening day and the weekend, it needs time for the word of mouth to build, and people to come into theatres. In case of '12th Fail', people were talking about the film in the fourth and 12th week, it was allowed to breathe,” Motwane told PTI in an interview.
Motwane said not every film can open in 5,000 or 2,000 screens as some movies take time to grow in screens from hundreds to thousands. "We've 10,000 screens for 1.3 billion people, there are 30,000 screens in the US for 300 million people. We can't blame movie theatres because everybody wants to make as much money as possible. We are coming out of a post pandemic world where we need to correct our losses.
"But we need a balance (between screens for big and small films), 70 percent of our screens can be for that (big films) but 30 percent of it needs to be for a certain kind of film. There should be a little bit of diversity.” "12th Fail", directed by Vidhu Vinod Chopra, has earned over Rs 70 crore at the box office worldwide but Varun Grover's "All India Rank" could not stay in theatres for long despite great reviews.
"If every film had that much time to breathe, then it would be a success story. However, 'All India Rank' is out of theatres in two weeks," Motwane said.
The filmmaker has two projects in the pipeline – “Black Warrant”, a series based on the book by Tihar Jail’s longest serving superintendent Sunil Gupta and journalist Sunetra Choudhury, and a cyber thriller film titled “Control”, starring Ananya Panday.
Calling himself platform agnostic, Motwane said he will continue to narrate stories for theatrical and over-the-top audiences.
“I love watching series and films, so I love making everything. I also like watching small movies. I'm agonistic as far as formats are concerned. Whatever excites me, I do it whether it's a film or series.” The success of “Jubilee” gave Motwane the “confidence” to deliver a compelling story.
“Every project is a new challenge. You are as nervous as you are for your first film, and so was I (for ‘Jubilee’). The only thing is that I'm confident about my storytelling ability. I don’t think anyone has cracked what works and what doesn't work with the audience, a good story will connect with people,” he said.
“We've started work (on season two) but I've no idea when it will happen. Season two will take time. We don't want to make anything in hush-hush,” Motwane added.
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