Blocked buster: Deepanjana Pal on the tussle over where to release Bhool Chuk Maaf
The tug-of-war between theatrical dates and streaming release has entered a new phase, with a ₹60-crore lawsuit thrown in.
When Maddock Films decided to take the straight-to-streaming route with Bhool Chuk Maaf, they probably didn’t think it would lead to a ₹60-crore lawsuit.
Tensions between India and Pakistan were high around the film’s original release date of May 9. The Indian Premier League had been suspended. This, the producers felt, was not an ideal time to release, in theatres, a mid-sized comedy with no A-listers on its cast.
The theatre owners were livid, a mood no doubt exacerbated by the fact that Maddock announced its decision to go straight to streaming on May 8, a day before the scheduled theatrical release.
In a time of steadily declining footfall for cinemas, the new Maddock film had shimmered with possibility. This production company has served up a number of surprise hits in recent years, including the comedy horrors Munjya (2024) and Stree 2 (2024). The production house was also behind this year’s biggest blockbuster so far, Chhaava. Their Hindi releases have been winning over critics and convincing audiences to buy tickets to see unconventional projects.
Unwilling to sit quietly by and take the hit, on May 10, PVR Inox responded to Maddock Films’ decision with a lawsuit claiming breach of contract. They had suffered ₹60 crore in damages, the suit stated. After some legal wrangling, and an interim order from the Bombay high court, it was announced that the film would be released in theatres on May 23, and on Amazon Prime two weeks later.
As compromises go, it’s a worrying one. Maybe Maddock Films’ luck will hold, but with just a two-week window before it becomes available on streaming, the odds are now stacked against Bhool Chuk Maaf’s theatrical run (irrespective of how good the film may be).
In many circles, straight-to-streaming is still seen as a cut-and-run by the producer. Bhool Chuk Maaf, starring Rajkummar Rao and Wamiqa Gabbi, needn’t have had such a crisis of confidence. For Chhaava, for instance, Maddock ensured an eight-week gap between theatrical and digital releases.
Commenting on the tangle at an event, Aamir Khan put it well when he indicated that theatre-going increasingly boils down to how many streaming subscriptions a given viewer has. “If I have to be very honest to my audience when I’m marketing my film, I have to tell my audience that, guys, my film is releasing but all those people who are on this particular subscription on this particular OTT, they’ve already bought my film. They don’t need to come to the theatres. The ones who are not on this OTT, please come and watch my film.”
The truth is that for the bulk of viewers, and cinephiles, in India, small screens are where they now watch films. Streaming platforms may make space for out-of-the-box entertainment, but their quest to increase subscription has led them to court mainstream movies with a vengeance too. This comes at a cost to theatrical earnings.
Khan, for instance, will make his upcoming release Sitaare Zameen Par available on YouTube, on a pay-per-view basis, eight weeks after its theatrical release. In certain demographics, OTT has in fact become the equivalent of television, and pay-per-view options on YouTube, Amazon Prime, Apple TV+ and Bookymyshow Streams are serving as the alternative to going to the cinema.
In an ideal world, this would at least mean more vibrancy in the small-screen space, and room for every kind of creative endeavour. But that was originally the hope with the streamers, and we saw how that turned out. What we have instead is a surfeit of the subpar.
Hope now lies in the fact that, despite myriad and systematic attempts to flatten creativity, cinema has been embraced by risk-takers and dreamers. Let’s hope that we in the audience, in this age of excess, are able to find them.
(To reach Deepanjana Pal with feedback, write to @dpanjana on Instagram)
