One of Bill Shakespeare’s aphorisms in Hamlet — “There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so” — may be a fitting appraisal of Omkara’s performance.
Sachin Kalbag & Shabana Ansari
WASHINGTON: One of Bill Shakespeare’s aphorisms in Hamlet — “There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so” — may be a fitting appraisal of Omkara’s performance.
In India, Vishal Bharadwaj’s adaptation of Othello may not have vaulted over its own extravagant hype. But in the US, it has breached the US Top 20 in the first weekend of release.
Industry pundits direct attention to the opening-day figures in the domestic market. “The collections were pegged as low as 25 per cent in some areas,” says analyst Taran Adarsh.
Bharadwaj, however, feels it is too early to fill in the report card: “It is unfair to label the film a flop within a week of its release.”
The director berated the media for running down his film: “What message is the media giving filmmakers? That they should only make movies with a tried-and-tested formula?”
But he is heartened by the US response. “It means a lot to me that a film set in rural India is doing so well in a non-traditional market.”
Industry insiders suggest that audiences in India may have been dismayed by the film’s explicit language and the curious dialect of the characters. Paradoxically, what was construed as crude in the motherland seems to have been cherished as authentic exotica by expatriates.
Indeed, the latest US box-office figures suggest that Omkara made $427,400 in the first three days of its release in 47 theatres across the country. It is currently No 19 on the list.
The film had the second highest per-theatre earning average of $9094 in the Top 20 list, beating Miami Vice, which earned $8515 per screen. Even Johnny Depp starrer Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest could manage only $5375 per screen.
The response has prompted Eros Entertainment, global distributors of Omkara, to book more theatres next week. Reshma Gala, Eros’s North America marketing manager, told DNA, “We have been getting a tremendous number of calls from people requesting us to play the film in their area.”
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