STANDALONE SAVIOUR: A dramatic moment from Angels & Demons Madly Bangalee

Angels or Demons? asked Tom Hanks in his Twitter update of May 14, a day before Angels & Demons hit screens world-wide.

“Angels,” comes the shout from Calcutta’s standalone cinemas.

After a two-month lull because of the producer-plex war (till the hatchet was buried early on Friday) and five years of losing out to multiplexes (ever since INOX-Forum happened), the city’s single screen theatres found a lifeline in Tom Hanks’s latest blockbuster.

Also, in the last few weeks that Bollywood was playing devil over revenue-sharing, the angel act for the plexes came from an unlikely quarter — the Tollywood trio of Madly Bangalee, Cross Connection and even Saat Pake Bandha.

Despite releasing only at single screens, Angels & Demons grossed 19 million in its first weekend in the country and the reports from Calcutta were “very encouraging” for producers Sony Pictures. “We are happy to see audiences coming back to single screens in a big way,” said Kercy Daruwala, the managing director of Sony Pictures.

Authored by Dan Brown and directed by Ron Howard, Angels & Demons was off to a bright start in Calcutta. “In the first three days, the collections were upwards of Rs 1 lakh in each of the standalone cinemas screening Angels & Demons. We expect the film to do even better in its second week,” said Debashish Dey of Kapurchand Films, distributors of the Tom Hanks film in the eastern region.

No wonder the likes of Menoka owner Pranab Roy could not stop smiling. “Angels & Demons has proved a boon for single screen theatres. We had house-full matinee and evening shows in the first weekend, with a lot of the multiplex-going crowd of families and college students,” said Roy.

Navina too was playing host to a “family crowd” and recording 60 per cent-plus occupancy for the first time in two months. “Last Sunday evening, the hall was nearly full and the crowd comprised mostly families and young couples. I had a very pleasant experience — the film was good, the crowd was good, the popcorn was good,” said Golf Garden resident Dhrubo Mukherjee, a plex addict.

The last time standalone cinemas managed to gain the upper hand was in May 2006 when the Aamir Khan-Kajol starrer Fanaa did not release at the plexes and went on to become a hit.

A hit is what some Tollywood films are at the plexes these days.

“Madly Bangalee is doing well in the multiplexes. We got good slots (INOX City Centre had four shows, Fame South City, Fame Hiland Park and INOX Swabhumi had three shows each in the first week) because there were no Bollywood films,” said director Anjan Dutt.

Madly Bangalee and the earlier Cross Connection brought in two sets of plex regulars and Tolly rarities — GenX and the non-Bengali.

“Cross Connection, with a five-week run at the plexes, has proved that if Bengali films are given prime slots we can compete with Bollywood films,” said directors Sudeshna Roy and Abhijeet Guha.

Roy, for example, has got “very good feedback” from some students of St Xavier’s College. “Non-Bengalis are watching Bangla films too as there are no Bolly releases. I had gone to buy a mobile phone and the shopowner, a non-Bengali, happened to have seen Cross Connection. When he heard I had directed the film, he gave me a discount of Rs 1,000!” she laughed.

If Roy is cashing in on the plex performance of her film in more ways than one, Mahendra Soni, producer of Saat Pake Bandha, is reaping the benefits of Bolly absence and the presence of more plex-friendly Tolly films. The Jeet-Koel starrer, despite being a more conventional Tolly film, is doing better at the plexes than earlier Venkatesh Films releases. “The feedback is encouraging and we looking at more plex shows,” said Soni.

From Friday, of course, normalcy — read Bollywood — returns to screens single and multiple, after a forced fling with Holly-Tolly.

Hollywood distributors and Tollywood makers can only hope that eight weeks is enough to form a habit.