Daniel Craig is James Bond in Casino Royale

The good news first. Casino Royale is the biggest Hollywood release ever in India, with a record 500 prints being distributed across the country. Now, the bad news. Calcutta has got just 16 of those 500 prints.

Calcutta’s poor track record in English movies has cost the city’s Bond fan brigade dear. Casino Royale, the 21st James Bond film and the first one with Daniel Craig, has failed to shake or stir the city, despite six to eight shows a day lined up at the plexes.

Compare the 16 prints to Mumbai’s 53 and Delhi’s 30-plus prints and it’s clear where Calcutta figures in the Hollywood scheme of things.

What’s worse, the Friday 17 count will be lower than the number of prints of the 2002 Bond film, Die Another Day, released here when the city didn’t have a single multiplex. And the Pierce Brosnan film, the last to have him as 007, had seen only 262 prints coming into the country.

But the decision to go with lesser prints may have little to do with Craig taking over from Brosnan and giving Bond a blond new look and bruised feel.

“It was a last-minute decision made in Mumbai and it really baffles me,” says Arijit Dutta, east India distributor of Casino Royale. “You do not need to be a film-buff to realise that a Bond film deserves more prints in the city. Even King Kong got double the number of prints for Calcutta.”

That the number of prints for a Bond film grew from 262 to 500 in four years is confirmation of Hollywood’s booming business in metros other than Calcutta.

“The speed with which screens have sprung up in Mumbai and Delhi is amazing,” observes Vikramjit Roy, publicity head of Sony Pictures India, national distributor of Casino Royale. “This proliferation hasn’t happened in Calcutta and so, we can’t go so big there.”

Despite the poor print count, the multiplexes are going big with Bond. While Fame (Hiland Park) is starting out with eight shows daily for Week One, INOX and 89 Cinemas are screening Casino Royale six times a day.

“It is our discretion what we do with one print and we really wanted to go wide with this one,” says Subhashish Ganguly, general manager of INOX (City Centre). “Bond is always a very urban film and it should do well at the plexes.”

The advance block bookings bear testimony to that. Companies like Hungama TV, Sony PIX and Smirnoff have blocked part or entire shows this weekend. Plexes apart, Casino Royale releases at Nandan (from November 20), New Empire and Globe.