Rohit Shetty feels promoting films is a waste of money and makes a valid point

Ahead of Golmaal Again, director Rohit Shetty reveals why he is against the concept of going all out to promote his films

By: Fukres |
October 4, 2017 4:44 pm

Rohit Shetty, who is gearing up for the release of Golmaal Again, believes that one should market films strategically rather than mere carpet bombing by visiting ‘every possible mall’ in India. The director, while interacting with a leading website, said that the audience make up their mind to watch a film based on the first theatrical trailer and that everything that follows after that in the name of promotions was irrelevant.

“I am against the concept of promoting films 3 months in advance by visiting every possible mall. If you as a star go to any mall, people would come to see you. After looking at the crowd you start believing that the ones who have come to the mall will buy film ticket as well. This never happens. I am really bored of it. Singham Returns had a 28-day promotional campaign. We should give space to everyone and jump onto the campaign at the right time. If the first promo is good, everyone would come to see your film. If the first promo is not good, no one would come. You can go all out to promote your film, still, no one would come to watch it. You can’t fool the audience,” said Shetty.

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Rohit Shetty further revealed that spending Rs 20 to 25 crore on a film’s promotion adds to the massive pressure on the directors as that increases the budget of the film by a substantial amount. Shetty, who is considered as one of the most bankable directors in the industry, slammed the people responsible for writing articles that talk about incidents on the set. He added,

What are those articles which says the actors had that kind of food, this accident had happened on the sets, so many takes they had done, so much training they did, I don’t understand. These articles are really funny. We should go the old school way in film promotions. We should publicise the songs, trailer and posters. People don’t realize that it is difficult to recover the additional Rs 25 crore we spend on publicity. We need to collect Rs 50 crore at Box Office to recover the 25 crore spent on publicity. The recovery pressure is built on the director. This is the case for big films as well as small films. The promotional budget adds excess pressure. I had put my foot down during Singham Returns. I said will not promote Singham Returns. And if you see Singham Returns promotions, it was just 28 days. It was the highest opener of all time at that time. I don’t want to spend on promotions as a producer.

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Rohit Shetty’s next directorial, Golmaal Again, is slated to hit the big screen this Diwali. The movie is the fourth instalment in the successful Golmaal franchise.

— As quoted by Bollywood Hungama