BELLBOTTOM will be the film which will try and some sort of decent audience back to the cinemas this time. The release of the trailer means the makers have decided to come without cinemas in Maharashtra and Bihar being open. Bihar cinemas will start to open from Friday but most of Maharashtra is still likely to closed when BELLBOTTOM releases.

BELLBOTTOM is taking a 30% hit in terms of Maharashtra not open and taking into account that some districts will be open its going to be around 25% at release time unless some good news comes from Maharashtra. The trailer came out a couple of days back and it was a decent trailer in terms of the story of the film. The film was made in the Coronavirus pandemic so obviously the scale of the film is not as it could have been. 

Still BELLBOTTOM will the first major Hindi release for 18 months. The last major release in the cinemas with a cast was BAAGHI 3 way back in March 2020. The plus is that a film is coming up early in this second round of cinemas reopening as last time the industry left it late and the second wave hit the country. But on the negative side, it will be a small release considering its an Akshay Kumar starrer. 

It will be hard to build capacity because there are a lot of factors against it with the first being most of Maharashtra being shut and second the 50% occupancy rule everywhere barring Nizam. Thirdly not all the cinemas will be open in states outside Maharashtra as some have issues with rent and need some sort of settlements to open and others will want  to see a flow of releases to open as they will not want to shut shop again after BELLBOTTOM.

There is no doubt that BELLBOTTOM will find some sort of audience despite the headwinds as it has a major star and the trailer is pretty good but the business will only be what the box office allows. Before BELLBOTTOM, a major Punjabi release PUAADA will come and this will tell the position of cinemas in Punjab and some properties of Delhi. It can be assumed most of the Hindi markets will be in the same position as Delhi and Punjab in terms of how the audience feels about cinema at the moment. Its a plus that there are mainly multiplexes in Delhi and Punjab as well so it will tell about that multiplex audience which so all important for Hindi films. 

Both PUAADA and BELLBOTTOM will be getting 50% revenue sharing terms for the first TWO weeks from the multiplexes which is better than normal. The release of better films early will mean a larger audience returning faster to the cinemas. This could lead to a decent last quarter of the year of course depending on the trajectory of Covid-19 though it will be 2022 when event films of Hindi cinema featuring the reigning Khans like PATHAN, TIGER 3 and LAAL SINGH CHADDHA will see a release.