Vivek Oberoi's film faces theatre crunch

Mumbai: After a not-so-great response to Kismet Love Paisa Dilli (KLPD), actor Vivek Oberoi’s romantic comedy Jayantabhai Ki Luv Story released on Friday. The film’s initial reports are largely encouraging. However, it is facing an unforeseen crisis — a shortage of movie theatres! Vivek plays a goofy gangster in the movie. The two releases Feb 8 — Neeraj Pandey’s “Special 26” and Remo D’Souza’s “ABCD: AnyBody Can Dance” have both become much stronger box-office bets than anticipated, thereby precipitating an unexpected bottleneck at the turnstiles. [caption id=“attachment_627514” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Reuters[/caption] Film exhibitors all over the country, who anticipated a shortfall in the footfalls for both the films this week, have decided to continue with last week’s releases rather than replace them with the new releases Friday. Arvind Sharma, a prominent distributor-exhibitor from Bihar, said: “It is truly unexpected. We never expected both the films this week to do well. I can’t remember when was the last time this happened. Now that ‘Special 26’ and ‘ABCD’ both are doing well, we can’t pull them out.” While exhibitors have accommodated Mukesh Bhatt’s son Vishesh’s directorial “Murder 3” into the schedules, they are reluctant to make adjustments for “Jayantabhai Ki Luv Story”. “The ‘Murder’ franchise has some face value. But Vivek Oberoi’s films have not been doing well. Convincing exhibitors to replace last week’s successful film with a Vivek Oberoi-starrer would be difficult,” said Sharma. Kumar Taurani of Tips is remarkably forthright on the exhibition crisis faced by his film. Said Taurani: “Yes, we have a problem in getting shows, but I feel that could be an advantage as ‘Jayantabhai Ki Luv Story’ is a mid-sized rom-com and whoever is interested, will go for those selected shows. I am hopeful we’ll get housefulls in the shows that we’ve got.” IANS