On Sunday, Maharashtra government declared lockdown-like restrictions from Monday April 5, 8:00 pm onwards. As part of these curbs, all theatres were asked to shut shop till April 30. It dealt a huge blow to the cinema sector as Maharashtra consists of crucial centres like Mumbai and Pune. The state contributes nearly 30-35% of box office in India. Hence, with theatres shut in this state, there’s no way Hindi films can afford to release. 2 April releases – ‘Chehre’, scheduled for April 9 and ‘Bunty Aur Babli 2’ scheduled for April 23 release, were already postponed a week before. After the lockdown announcement, ‘Sooryavanshi’, scheduled for release on April 30, was also indefinitely pushed ahead. It remains to be now seen whether the May releases also got pushed. The chances of it are there especially if cases don’t reduce soon enough.
Meanwhile, this week will see the release of two films, straight on digital. The first one is ‘The Big Bull’. It stars Abhishek Bachchan, Ileana DCruz, Nikita Dutta, Sohum Shah and others and is co-produced by Ajay Devgn. Directed by Kookie Gulati, it is a fictionalized account of infamous stock broker Harshad Mehta. The film releases today, on Disney+ Hotstar, at 7:30 pm. It was supposed to come out last year. But it was pushed ahead due to the super-success of the web series, ‘Scam 1992’ (2020). It was also based on the life of Harshad Mehta. The show got an unprecedented response. The makers of The Big Bull, reportedly, felt that if their film came out around the release of ‘Scam 1992’ (2020), it’ll lead to a lot of negativity and comparisons. Hence, they decided to wait it out.
The trailer of ‘The Big Bull’ was finally released on March 19. Many felt that it’ll be slammed by ‘Scam 1992’ (2020) fans and also by the anti-nepotism gang that nowadays assembles to troll a film featuring a star kid. Thankfully, the trailer was interesting and the negativity was negligible. Abhishek seems to be in great form. His interesting quotes and his antics during promotional interviews have also got a fine response on social media and it has further added to the film’s hype in a small way.
The other release is ‘Hello Charlie’, starring Aadar Jain, Elnaaz Norouzi and Jackie Shroff. The premise is hilarious. It’s about Jackie Shroff’s character who dresses up as a gorilla to evade arrest. The madness begins when a real gorilla comes into the picture. The film is produced by Farhan Akhtar and Ritesh Sidhwani and it’s all set to release on Amazon Prime on Friday April 9. The trailer is funny and it left everyone by surprise. After all, this film hardly made any noise when it was in production and hence, the expectations and even awareness about the film were negligible. If the film turns out to be a fun entertainer, it’s sure to find a good response and trend on digital.
