EXCLUSIVE: Amitabh Bachchan Starrer Ab Ani CD’s Producer Akshay Bardapurkar Speaks About Film’s Rerun, Admits It's Depressing

The Amitabh Bachchan and Vikram Gokhale starrer Marathi film AB Ani CD has been produced by Akshay Bardapurkar. The film was released recently however, it had to be taken down from the theatres following the immediate lockdown due to the Coronavirus outbreak! The entire film industry has been reeling under the lockdown.

This film had a big star cast and needless to say the budget too goes for a toss especially when the makers have already released the film and then again has taken it down from the theatres following a problematic situation. The main challenge in front of the makers now is to re-release the film with the same hype it had before the original release. We at Desimartini.com exclusively got in touch with the producer to understand the nitty-gritty of it all.

Speaking about the re-release of the film Akshay revealed that a little extra had to be spent and the other half will be taken care of by the left-over budget which was already set aside for the post-release of the film. Quipped he, “Ideally, we invested about 50% of the cost of the project before our film release. Since this is going to be a rerun, I anticipate at least 25% of the COP will have to be invested only in the P&A and rest would be managed from our earlier leftover budget which was assigned for post-release.”

Speaking of Mr Amitabh Bachchan and the speculations of his contribution to the re-release of the film, the producer made it clear that there is no reason to expect any help from Big B because he has done what was required for him to do as far as the film is concerned, “No Question of asking him anything at all, we have very well covered our films costs from the ancillaries platforms such as satellite and digital, hence we are already in the safe zone, what we can probably seek from him is to maybe send a video or tweet for us once the film releases announcing that it's in theatres, Mr Bachchan has already done enough for us hence I don't want to trouble him beyond this small favour.”

Most of the films that are stalled or are re-released or are released after a long gap barely manage to attract the audiences to the theatres especially because the attention span of the audience is pretty less, but Akshay thinks this won’t be the case with AB Ani CD because the film was taken off the theatres on the day of the lockdown. “Concentration spans come at the fore when we have used all our generic way of promoting and the film was released beyond a point like saying one or two weeks, then it would have been difficult for us to draw them again to theatres, but in our case, we were slightly lucky as we stopped the shows the same day as the lockdown was announced. What we need to do at the most is to accelerate the P&A again and gain the momentum as soon as it releases. He further thinks that the release of other films otherwise might affect his film, he continued, “or else with other film releasing at the same time it would be challenging for us to find that space. Thanks to big names such as AB and VG we are dead sure that audience will turn up irrespective.”

The producer further admitted that he is jolted by the circumstances his film is in and he is feeling crippled by it as well, “Yes, none of us ever thought that we would land up in such situations and the feeling of being handicapped by the sudden turn of events comes in, it's depressing, it is sad and it’s a bit emotional as well that we can’t reach out to the public in spite of a great film in hand. However, like I said I find a ray of hope that the film was taken off immediately and the audience didn't quite see it, so our new release will be as fresh as the old one. And finally, public health is more important hence these things can really wait, but praying to God that it reopens and people throng the theatres to watch it maybe that confidence will erase all the past 2 months memories.

Well, we at Desimartini hope things fall in place and people come in throngs to watch Ab Ani CD. For more such updates keep a close tab on Desimartini.com