Revealed: The TRUTH behind Shah Rukh Khan – Kajol’s Dilwale and Ranveer Singh – Deepika Padukone’s Bajirao Mastani clash!

 

While the clash of Rohit Shetty’s rollicking entertainer Dilwale with Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s magnum opus Bajirao Mastani on December 18 is being touted as a ‘war’ by the media and fans of movie stars alike, smaller battles in this arena seem to be under-way already on the social media! To understand these social media battles, all you need to do is post a tweet saying good things about Bajirao Mastani and you will have fans of Shah Rukh Khan hounding you and accusing you of everything ranging from partiality, biases, ignorance, idiocy and more! Likewise, make a post stating how excited you are about Dilwale and you shall encounter a volley of replies that ask some ridiculous things ranging from how much money has SRK paid you to praise Dilwale to how you don’t have taste for ‘classy’ cinema!
Its nice to see healthy competition between films and the companies releasing them, but things seem to have become quite ugly off late courtesy the advent of social media. Amusingly, you have the audience being bothered about the number of screens a movie would release in or the collections it would fetch over the opening weekend rather than enjoying the film for the entertainment value it provides! Loose statements such as ‘X will crush Y at the box office’ have become a common feature and that is extremely disrespectful to the efforts that go into the making and release of these films! Any filmmaker, actor, distributor or exhibitor with stakes in the fraternity will never ever make statements that demean the intentions and efforts of their fraternity & to the best of their ability, make efforts to ensure that every film gets its due at the box office and ploughs back some moolah that will ensure that more films continue to get made!

However, for the knowledge of those who want to know the details of this ‘battle’ for screen space, things hang in a good balance for both the films as of now! The distribution clout of Red Chillies Entertainment as well as Eros is being used well to ensure that both the films get the kind of showcasing they deserve. Most territories will witness a well balanced release for both the films and the optimal division of shows across multiplexes will ensure that the audience has enough choice of show timings to choose from as per their convenience.
The tug of war match between the two companies however is for a higher count of single screen cinemas, which don’t have the showcasing inventory (number of shows) that the multiplexes do, but have their presence in a lot of small towns where multiplex chains are far from reaching anytime soon! This is where the distributors of Eros & Red Chillies Entertainment will have to use their clout, relationships and bargaining skills to ensure that their respective films get the outreach that they need to have an edge over the other across the length and breadth of India! While the ideal scenario would be to have these single screen cinemas divide shows between the two films, what happens eventually is something only time will tell!
When Dilwale and Bajirao Mastani roll out at the cinemas on the 18th of December, the audience would have two amazing options to choose from and the best choice they would be able to make (for their own good) would be to watch them both!