After seven months of complete shutdown, theatres finally got a nod to reopen with 50% occupancy. Happy with the move, filmmaker-actor Ananth Mahadevan feels now is the time when small-budget yet high on content films can lead the movement.
“The darkness between you and the big screen, the community viewing is the irreplaceable magic that cinema creates. You can’t have that 70 mm feel on as mobile, tab or small screen. Hence, the present state of affair was depressing,” he says.
Talking about the 50% occupancy norm, Mahadevan finds it’s amusing as for him, even if 40 people are watch his film in a 100/200-seater hall, that’s enough.
“I’ve been telling multiplexes to give small budget films like ours — Gour Hari Dastaan starring Vinay Pathak — a few good timing for a couple of weeks with reduced ticket prices, and see how it also draws sizeable audience, but that never happened. Now that the world has been churned and turned inside out with no big budget taking the chance of releasing now, smaller ones that didn’t get much space earlier, can be the saviour. I myself have two films to offer,” he explains.
