Mithunda magic

Mithun's latest Bengali film seems set to break collection records.

Look closely at the poster on the right. People all over West Bengal have been looking at walls plastered with it for the past one month, wondering whether Mithun Chakravarty had finally decided to join politics. And then they found out that it was a film starring the actor, and flocked the theatres in hordes to see it.

The film "" MLA Phatakeshto "" is a super hit, grossing Rs 3 crore in three weeks. Its producer and distributor, Shrikant Mohta of Shree Venkatesh Films, believes that by the time it bows out of the theatres, it will have collected Rs 8-9 crore, quite unprecedented for a Bengali film.

The two movies that the local film industry considers hits in the past couple of years "" Juddha, an action-drama also from Shree Venkatesh, and Bombaier Bombetey, starring Sabyasachi Chakraborty as Satyajit Ray's popular sleuth Feluda "" grossed Rs 5 crore and Rs 1.5 crore respectively.

Fans, and there are many of them, will tell you that MLA Phatakeshto displays Mithunda's audience-draw-power at the box office, since there is nothing new in the story of a local goonda (hooligan) who fights and defeats a corrupt political leader.

Apparently, what has worked for the movie is timing, and a well-thought-out publicity campaign to capitalise on that timing. And then the icing on the cake "" controversy "" on whether the film should be allowed at election-time. Says Arijit Dutta, an exhibitor: "All that media attention definitely fuelled curiosity and created awareness."

The increase in the cost of tickets "" 30-40 per cent in the cities and 100 per cent in the districts ""- helped the film-makers too, as did the decision to simultaneously release a record 61 prints in north and south Bengal. This increased the cost of the film to Rs 2.25 crore, but the risk paid off.

As Mohta sees it, the rural audiences "" as opposed to the multiplex-oriented urban elite "" are coming back to regional films, just as in south India. "Black collected only Rs 1.25 crore in West Bengal, 90 percent of which came from Kolkata.

City audiences loved Dil Chahta Hai, but it was Greek to the masses, who go for action, melodrama." It is a success formula that Mohta has seen working in films like Juddha, Saathi and Sasurbadi Zindaabad. His films may rework the same trite plots, but they have higher budgets and better production. And then, of course, there's Mithun da...