No more waiting for the official DVD release. No more rummaging through shops selling pirated copies. No more endless hours of downloading from the Net.

Watching a new Hollywood film in Calcutta is no longer such a difficult exercise. After being ignored for many summers, city screens have been flooded by the latest English movies in the last couple of months.

10,000 BC, Horton Hears A Who!, The Forbidden Kingdom, Iron Man, Speed Racer, The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, Sex and the City, The Happening, The Incredible Hulk, Get Smart… all the films have either had a day-and-date release in Calcutta or arrived within a couple of weeks of its global launch.

“They have become as anticipated and as watched as Bollywood films now,” said INOX (Forum) general manager Vikas Syal. “Ever since multiplexes came to Calcutta, the size of the English movie-watching audience has been increasing and they are finally getting their due. And because of this simultaneous release, the size is growing further and we are recording phenomenal numbers.”

Proof: Sex and the City, in Week 3, registered a couple of house-full shows at the Elgin Road plex last weekend.

The six screens of Fame (South City) have played their part in expanding the Calcutta market and the Thursday evening premieres of Indiana Jones 4 and Sex and the City were proof of that. Musician Bickram Ghosh, who attended both premieres, said: “I feel proud that Calcutta is growing on the map. We have missed a lot of good movies in the middle but not any more.”

Abhishek Raina, the marketing head of Fame Cinemas, agreed. “Earlier, it used to be a deferred release in India and then Calcutta would get to watch it a few months after Mumbai and Delhi. But this is a thing of the past. Now paid previews are, in fact, allowing Calcuttans to watch the movie before the world.”

The party has just begun. In the coming weeks, swooping down on the city screens will be Batman in The Dark Knight, Will Smith in and as Hancock and Po the Kung Fu Panda.