Vikramaditya Motwane Cites 12th Fail As a ‘Case Study’ For Films To Be Commercially Succesful

Vikramaditya Motwane is a well-known director famed for Udaan, Lootera and Trapped. The director has opened up on the need for small-budget and medium-budget films to get ‘breathing time’ on screens. He cited the example of Vikrant Massey starrer 12th Fail which according to him, continued to stir conversations in the fourth week as well as the 12th week of release. 

Vikramaditya Motwane says small to mid-budget movies can grow in numbers if it stays in theatres for longer

Hailing the success of Vikrant Massey-starter 12th Fail, the director said the movie can be an interesting case study for how a small to mid-budget movie can grow in numbers if it stays in theatres and builds upon positive word of mouth.

"12th Fail is a great case study of a film that can be commercially and critically successful. For any movie to work in a theatre beyond the opening day and the weekend, it needs time for word of mouth to build, and for people to come into theatres. In the case of 12th Fail, people were talking about the film in the fourth and 12th week, it was allowed to breathe,” Motwane told PTI in an interview. 

There should be a little bit of diversity: Vikramaditya Motwane on screenspace 

Motwane said not every film can open in 5,000 or 2,000 screens as some movies take time to grow in screens from hundreds to thousands. "We've 10,000 screens for 1.3 billion people, there are 30,000 screens in the US for 300 million people. We can't blame movie theatres because everybody wants to make as much money as possible. We are coming out of a post-pandemic world where we need to correct our losses.

"But we need a balance, 70 per cent of our screens can be for that but 30 per cent of it needs to be for a certain kind of film. There should be a little bit of diversity.” 12th Fail, directed by Vidhu Vinod Chopra, has earned over ₹70 crore at the box office worldwide but Varun Grover's "All India Rank" could not stay in theatres for long despite great reviews. "If every film had that much time to breathe, then it would be a success story,” Motwane said.

(With inputs from PTI)