The war of release dates in Bollywood is a soap-opera by itself. Carefully choosing their dates almost a year in advance, most mainstream producers try to avoid clashing with the film of a big superstar like the Khans or Akshay Kumar. Given the glowing box office reports of his recent films, it wouldn’t be an understatement to call Ayushmann Khurrana the star of the moment. With five consecutive superhits, the trade is bullish on his next film Bala too. Except there’s another film called Ujda Chaman, that deals with the same topic as the Ayushmann Khurrana-starrer.
Amar Kaushik’s Bala, which deals with premature balding of a young man, was initially slated for release on Nov 15. But with the emergence of Ujda Chaman, the Bala makers moved the film’s release to Nov 8, alongside Ujda Chaman‘s original release date. Producer Kumar Mangat called out Bala‘s producers, accusing them of being unethical. After all, Ujda Chaman is the smaller film, in comparison to the Ayushmann Khurrana-starrer that is being pegged as a sure-shot winner.
However, given the similar trailers of the two films – the makers of Bala decided that if they couldn’t be the first film, then they would release alongside the film that was claiming to be the first. But the official remake of a Kannada film – Ondu Motteya Kathe, Ujda Chaman has now moved its release date earlier by a week, and will now come out on Nov 1. The film will have a week’s edge over Amar Kaushik’s Bala.
The latter stars Bhumi Pednekar, Yami Gautam, Jaaved Jaaferi, Abhishek Banerji and Saurabh Shukla alongside Ayushmann Khurrana. Ujda Chaman stars Sonu Ke Titu Ki Sweety alumnus Sunny Singh alongside Maanvi Gagroo and Saurabh Shukla. And it’s being directed by Kumar Mangat’s son – Abhishek Pathak. It will be interesting to see what this means for Ujda Chaman, and how/if it actually ends up affecting the (relatively) more anticipated film – Bala.
