- However, this was a mere one off and It is believed that all future contracts with distributors will now have a proper clause mentioning about the window period which won’t be less than four weeks in near term due to COVID and once the occupancy cap is revised upwards it will come back to 6-8 weeks
- No other film (large or medium budget based) is willing to forgo on the window period for less than four weeks as it’s a loss to the distributors- in case of Master, the producer, exhibitor and distributor all were in profit despite the pandemic and the 50% occupancy cap which proves once again the demand for new large scale films in cinema. OTT Large studios/production houses in the Hindi movie production space too are not in favour of lowering the window period (6-8 weeks currently) as we are already at half of what global averages are (120 days); there are only a few small production houses who have asked or are in favour of a lower window on a temporary basis
- Master has reported collection of over INR 200cr (gross) pan India basis which is tad low due to a steep fall in collection numbers post first week. Further, weekday collection numbers have not been able to compensate for the loss made on weekends due to occupancy cap (weekend occupancy is almost 70% + whereas weekday occupancy has been 15-20%- annual averages in India) – this is the second instance of weekday collection not being able to live up to expectation as during Dusshera too in WB state, with new content releasing, collections were strong in the first weekend after which it fell sharply. We thereby believe that producers of large Hindi films will wait for occupancy cap revision before announcing their films