A moment from Iqbal

Small-budget creations for a small audience in a small hall. The multiplex movie is the toast of the times, with no less than five such releases on three successive Fridays.

But they are also causing a multiplex muddle ' managers don't know when to beam them and at which hours; audiences don't have much of a clue till the film is up and running.

My Wife's Murder, Iqbal, Dansh, Pyaar Mein Twist, Ramji Londonwaley' they have been coming thick and fast. One-tenth in budget to the Mangal Pandeys, no Khans to sell, no brands to tie up with, these films, made for 200-seater theatres, are often left to the mercy of multiplexes to promote and programme them right.

'The marketing and promotion budgets of these films are so low that you need to really raise the awareness levels of the audiences through contests and special offers,' says general manager of INOX (City Centre), Subhasish Ganguly. 'Sometimes even we don't know which film to slot at which time when they come at the same time, like this Friday when three multiplex movies (Dansh, Pyaar' and Ramji') have released together.'

With pre-release hype no match for the No Entrys and Salaam Namastes, the audiences don't really know what to expect. Says 89 Cinemas general manager Prashant Srivastava: 'I know people who mistook My Wife's Murder as an English movie and never bothered to check out the film. A good opening is alien to these small multiplex movies and they only bank on strong word-of-mouth publicity. So, usually, the second week collections are better than the first.'

By zeroing in on the urban upper-class cine-goer, the multiplex movies are killing the aam janta, crib some. 'Everyone is not a plex audience,' says distributor and exhibitor Arijit Dutta. 'So, these films completely alienate the masses, who have to wait for blockbusters.'

The multiplex movie, however, is a big boon for film-makers with limited budgets and smaller canvases. Says director Kanika Verma, whose Dansh releases on Friday: 'It's very encouraging, as we don't have to keep thinking of filling up 1,000 seats every show.'