Smriti Sen Gupta

The entertainment industry throughout the world is currently witnessing extreme adversity due to prolonged coronavirus situation, which may finally result in the closure of a number of film and television content production companies as well as cinema halls, cineplex, and television channels. According to market information, a number of Bollywood-based production companies in India are visibly sitting idle for the last three months and there is no sign of starting its activities in the coming weeks, as economic analysts are already predicting a massive financial crisis for India immediately after the ongoing lockdown is lifted. It may be mentioned here that, the Indian government has set August 30 as the last date for the ongoing lockdown, which began in March. For a huge country like India, with over a massive population and an acute unemployment crisis, the post-coronavirus situation would be far worse than any other previous economic recession.

Meanwhile, Bollywood production companies have already switched to video streaming platforms for releasing movies as an alternative to traditional cinema halls, although most of the released movies have failed even to get a major portion of the invested amount.

Talking to this correspondent, Rino Dutta, a Kolkata-based filmmaker said, “A movie, which was actually made for release in the cinema halls throughout India can not bring any similar revenue from the video streaming platform in weeks or even months, because, those are big-budget movies and most importantly the majority of their target audience is yet to be connected to video streaming platforms”.

Award-winning Bangladeshi maker Golam Sohrab Dodul did not agree with Rino Dutta’s argument. Instead, he said, especially during and after coronavirus scenarios, filmmakers and producers actually should switch to video streaming platforms, instead of depending on the cinema halls.

He said, in next couple of weeks, one of his special length films will be released on a video streaming platform. This film is produced by Crown Entertainment, Bangladesh’s leading production company and content provider.