'Sooryavanshi' Clashing Dates with Marvel’s ‘Eternals’ in India Theaters

It's suddenly all happening out there in Bollywood. The industry which had gone almost dormant in the last 18 months (no thanks to COVID), had hurriedly put out quite a large calendar of 2022 wherein several production houses have booked (or should we say occupied because you never know if another surge in COVID cases lies in-store) dates for their upcoming movies even though some of them are far from completing their shooting.

If all goes well and the dates that have been announced don't need to be changed, 'Sooryavanshi' is the first biggie that will see the light of day. Now, ETimes has it exclusively that the makers of the Akshay Kumar-led 'Sooryavanshi' have started calling up theatre owners to tell them that their film will not share the screens with any other movie releasing on the date that they are hitting the cinema halls (November 5, Diwali 2021).

The theatre owners have given it a thumbs-up; they well know they are going to be fed with another biggie from Reliance in Christmas 2021 - Ranveer Singh-led '83.

There were whispers since last evening that this has created a bit of an issue in the Salman Khan-Varun Dhawan-Aayush Sharma starrer 'Antim' and the English film Marvel's 'Eternals' as both had planned to release it on the same date that 'Sooryavanshi' ended up choosing.

As soon as the whispers reached our ears, we called up leading distributor Sunil Wadhwa, who is distributing 'Sooryavanshi' in Bombay Circuit. In his confirmation to what we had heard, Wadhwa said, "We welcome the decision of the Maharashtra State Government to reopen cinemas from October 22 and it has given us immense pleasure to announce our most awaited film of the year 'Sooryavanshi' as a Diwali release for not only the exhibitors but also for the moviegoers who were waiting for a big tentpole film. We are awaiting the SOP guidelines for Maharashtra based on which our distribution strategy will be planned.

In lieu of the above, all exhibitors have given us their solidarity to showcase 'Sooryavanshi' with 100 percent screen space, in fact in other states where cinemas have already reopened there is still a big chunk of cinemas which will open only with 'Sooryavanshi'."