Maverick filmmaker Anurag Kashyap’s time-bending drama ‘Dobaaraa’ (aka 2:12) staring the versatile performer Taapsee Pannu in the lead role is set for its theatrical release on 19th August 2022. Ostensibly inspired from Oriol Paulo’s Spanish thriller ‘Mirage’, the film’s intriguing premise revolves around two similar storms separated by 25 years and how a woman connects with a 12-year-old boy from the past through a television set.
The worrying thing about Dobaaraa’s theatrical release is that the film is coming out just a week after Aamir Khan starrer ‘Laal Singh Chaddha’ and ‘Raksha Bandhan’ featuring Akshay Kumar. In case any of these two movies click in a big way with the audiences, or worse, in case both films are able to attract movie goers, then there’s trouble brewing regarding the box-office prospects of ‘Dobaaraa’.
You might already remember what happened to a well-executed film like ‘Jersey’ starring Shahid Kapoor, which was released in theatres on 22nd April 2022, that is, a week after the supremely massive blockbuster ‘KGF: Chapter 2’. Despite getting unanimous positive feedback, ‘Jersey’ simply failed to overcome the KGF phenomenon.
If a similar thing happens to ‘Doobaara’, then that might prove to be another case of a potentially well-made movie becoming a box-office dud because of the effect of continual box-office run of bigger film(s). In this case, ‘Laal Singh Chaddha’ and ‘Raksha Bandhan’, which are already out in cinemas today.
There is no doubt that both ‘Laal Singh Chaddha’ and ‘Raksha Bandhan’ have their own following with strong prospective theatrical viewership and a serious potential to disrupt Dobaaraa’s box-office run in the coming week. Having said that, we earnestly hope that Anurag Kashyap and Taapsee Pannu’s ‘Doobaara’ will be able to make its own mark at the box-office and get the viewership it deserves.
But like any other theatrical release, that would depend on the post-theatrical release word-of-mouth amongst audiences, especially because of the lack of a big star with enormous box-office pull and a niche target audience. Should ‘Dobaaraa’ have skipped theatrical release and released directly on an OTT platform to counter the combined effect of ‘Laal Singh Chaddha’ and ‘Raksha Bandhan’? We’ll have a better idea about that next week.
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