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Would such a promotion work for films? Subhash Ghai tried to float the idea but failed

Subhash Ghai’s über-cool idea of treating cine-goers to two movies for the price of one crumbled at the 11th hour. The director of successful 1990s potboilers such as Pardes and Taal who also runs the production house Mukta Arts, had wanted to release Love Express and Cycle Kick together, and run them back-to-back in multiplexes, with a 10-minute interval in between the two 90-minute-long films. But the project ran into a snag apparently because it wasn’t tax-friendly.

But there’s not a jot of disappointment on Ghai’s face the next morning, as he humours his subordinates at Mukta Arts and even conducts a quick poll on whether he should change into something jazzier for the photo-shoot for this paper. Ghai’s confidence is palpable; sooner or later, he seems to feel, the world (read, reactionaries) will acknowledge his point of view and come round to his way of thinking.

“I’ve been having discussions with my distributors but, unfortunately, we found that there is a technical hindrance of entertainment tax if we are to show two films for the cost of one,” says Ghai. “Every state has a different rate of entertainment tax on tickets — some have 40 per cent, while others have 20 per cent. Therefore, they have different modes of operation.”

“Another vexed issue is that if a person wants to come back and watch the second movie the next day, then he has to pay tax on the ticket again... We have to go through the government before we can implement this. I will push for this again in the future with other films.”

For now, Ghai has decided to release Love Express and Cycle Kick on two different dates — June 10 and 17 June, respectively — but price the tickets lower. A Rs 100 ticket will cost Rs 60 or even Rs 50 in a multiplex.

It was a lecture tour to media schools across India a year ago which transformed Ghai’s outlook to the way he distributed films. “Many students came up to me and said ‘Sir, we can’t afford to pay so much to watch your films in multiplexes.’ They wished that I would reduce the ticket price for movies like Jogger’s Park and Iqbal.

This was the thought on which I acted. I found that it was really unjust for us to make a film for Rs 3 crore and charge the price of Rs 30 crore,” says Ghai who began his film career as an actor with Rajesh Khanna in Aradhana (1969), before going on to direct his first film Kalicharan (1976).

Combining films (one big film with two small ones or two small films) and slashed ticket rates should be encouraged, according to Ghai, as it helps young people watch films and film-makers launch new talent. In Love Express, most of the cast members were selected from Whistling Woods International (Ghai’s film insititute located inside Mumbai’s Film City), while Cycle Kick’s lead actors are first-timers from the Film and Television Institute of India. Both the directors as well as the concepts are new. While Love Express is a romantic comedy tracing two parallel love stories in a train full of baraatis from Amritsar to Mumbai, Cycle Kick is the story of how small things, no matter how modest to us, can be very important to another.

Ghai says that he believes in the maxim that cinema is a reflection of society and its time. “Today’s generation is in touch with reality… They aren’t as dreamy as the generation of 1990s or before,” he says with a smile, adding, “At the same time, they [the youth] want to derive more pleasure out of watching a movie.” This is on top of Ghai’s mind while making movies these days. For every shot that he cans, he asks himself, whether the action will find favour with the Gen X.