Here's how Bollywood plans to restart work amid coronavirus crisis

Bollywood, television, and commercial shootings have been put on hold ever since mid-March when the nationwide lockdown owing to coronavirus was first announced. However, now after 2 months there seems to be a glimmer of hope, after Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray’s couple of meetings with entertainment industry representatives and producers where he asked them to prepare an action plan on the limited resumption of film shooting and post-production activities.

Speaking about when it would be safe to shoot again filmmaker Ali Abbas Zafar feels that we "should patiently wait for 2-3 months before thinking of getting back on the sets". He said, "Even if you shoot with 50-70 people [in total], what if one person gets infected? Then, there are technical issues. How do you shoot scenes without two or more actors being nearby? What if DoP wants to take a close-up shot of an actor? However, the post-production work can surely start while taking all the precautions and minimum staff."

For the uninformed, various films such as Salman Khan’s Radhe, Aamir Khan’s Laal Singh Chadha, Sanjay Gupta-directed Mumbai Saga, Zafar’s Khaali Peeli, Bunty Aur Babli 2, Bhool Bhulaiyaa 2, had started shooting but are now stuck at various stages due to the lockdown.

Speaking about it producer Bhushan Kumar said, "There’s no doubt that safety of cast-and-crew will always come first. So, if shootings re-start, of course, there will be loads of challenges but you have to do something and start somewhere as something is better than nothing. Remember we’ve daily wage laborers and others whose livelihoods are at stake." 

Besides multi-starrer films like Takht and Shakun Batra’s next (starring Deepika Padukone, Ananya Panday, and Siddhant Chaturvedi) that are yet to go on floors, there are several other movies including Ayan Mukerji-directed Brahmastra, Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Gangubai Kathiawadi, among others that are all stuck either due to no-shooting status or post-production work.