SINGLE-SCREEN CASUALTY: Sonu Sood and Ishaa Koppikar in Ek Vivaah... Aisa Bhi

Singh is Kinng had 80 plex shows a day. Ek Vivaah… Aisa Bhi has zero shows at the multiplexes. Singh is Kinng had 2,000-plus prints. Ek Vivaah… Aisa Bhi has hardly 80.

Call it the contrary theory or just being hatke, Rajshri Pictures, the producer of Ek Vivaah…, has come to Bengal with just five prints. All at the standalone theatres of Roxy, Ajanta and Jaya and all to little avail.

“We wanted to establish the film at single screens first,” says K.S. Gopalakrishnan, the Calcutta representative of Rajshri Pictures. “Once the film does well, we plan to release it in multiplexes in the second phase.”

That seems a remote possibility at a time when multiplexes make or break a film and standalones struggle to make a mark. Rajshri Pictures might have been hoping to rewind to the glory days of Hum Aapke Hain Koun..!. Five years after Rajshri’s biggest grosser Maine Pyar Kiya, the Madhuri-Salman starrer had released in 1994 with just 30 prints nation-wide. But two years ago Vivah (Shahid Kapur-Amrita Rao) had enjoyed a big plex release and then gone on to be a rage at single screens.

Ek Vivaah… director Kaushik Ghatak, a boy from Burdwan, is not perturbed by his first film’s no-show at the plexes. “The Rajshri strategy is that it’s a slow take-off film,” he explains. “There are no big stars (Sonu Sood-Ishaa Koppikar) and it may not be a film to which young people will rush; they will come in slowly.”

But the no-plex strategy — in the time of first-weekend winners and wipeouts — seems to be playing party pooper at this Vivaah.

Few have turned up for the wedding with a difference in the first weekend with Roxy reporting “average collections”.

“By releasing it at only single screens, the Rajshris have followed a very conservative style which cannot work today,” says exhibitor and distributor Arijit Dutta. “If it had released at the plexes, they would have at least got some kind of returns,” adds the Priya cinema man.

With Quantum of Solace being the flavour of the week, Fashion still in fashion and biggies Dostana and Yuvvraaj set to storm the coming Fridays, this may be the last Bollywood sees of the standalone-only strategy.