Reeling multiplexes dust off old reels

“Many halls are re-running last year’s Bollywood hits,while others are running relatively unknown Hollywood films which would have not made it to Kolkata halls at all,” says Arijit Dutta,owner of Priya and Paradise Cinema.

Film producers and multiplex owners have been at loggerheads for the past one-and-a-half month over the percentage of profit to be shared from box office collections.

Film producers want to share profits equally with multiplex owners while the latter want a higher portion of the earnings. Caught between them is the film-deprived Kolkata audience. “Though I was glad that some English films found their way to Kolkata halls thanks to the standoff,even Hollywood releases have trickled to nothing now. I cannot wait for a resolution. I desperately want to see a big Bollywood masaala film,” says Chitralekha Chatterjee,a student of Bhownaipore Education Society and a movie buff.

Dutta insists that these are desperate times for Kolkata hall owners. “We are barely scraping through. It is becoming very difficult to even recover costs. And then,of course there were the elections. These past few months have been difficult for us,” he says.

The multiplex owners,however,are innovating. They have introduced interesting film festivals and retrospectives. “Our progamming is made as per the content made available to us by producers and distributors. Films like Cross Connection,Fast and Furious and the Oscar trio — Milk,Reader and Revolutionary Road — are doing very well across our three properties. We had organised a ‘World Cinema Retrospective’ in association with NDTV Lumiere and screened critically acclaimed films like Two Days in Paris,Far North,I’m Not There and Goodbye Bafana. We are also planning a children’s film festival later this month,” says Captain Virendra Marya of Inox.

Re-runs seems to be the order of the day here too. Successful films like Dev D,Billu and Rock On are being screened.

“The response has been heartening with Rock On still attracting an average of 105-110 patrons on weekends and 50-60 patrons on weekdays,” says Marya.

The coming weeks,however,holds a glimmer of hope for film patrons. The Cyrus Borucha-starrer,99,is releasing in the city and other small Bollywood films like Detective Naani are also lined up for release. “But we are all waiting for the biggies to arrive,” Dutta says.