KARACHI: To address the issue surrounding the no-show of The Legend of Maula Jatt at some of the known cinema houses, the distributor of the film Nadeem Mandviwalla held a press conference at a local hotel on Thursday evening.

He said that two months ago the team of The Legend of Maula Jatt hired him as distributor. “If you’ve seen it, a film of such level has never been made in Pakistan, nor can we think of making such a film. For them [makers] the biggest puzzle (muamma) was, given the cinemas that we have in the country, what strategy should we adopt to maximise returns. We have just passed through a big Covid period. For one and a half years, cinemas remained closed because of which they suffered huge losses. So we were aware of the financial liabilities that cinema owners had. I told them [producers of the film] that when a great project is made then it becomes important to make a strategy accordingly, but I did not want anyone to suffer any kind of loss.

“Pakistan has six big cinema groups. We invited them and I told them that it’s the most expensive film made in Pakistan. By that time I had seen the movie but no one else did. So I had the belief that Maula Jatt was going to be an historic picture for Pakistan. We requested all the cinemas to give us 10 per cent more share in the first week… If the screens got an increase of 10 per cent then it would fetch a big amount to the producers. We also knew that the kind of publicity that the picture was getting was unprecedented.”

He said since there’s a limited number of screens in Pakistan he didn’t have the choice to increase the number of screens. “If we had 1,000 screens, we didn’t have to use the strategy that we used. For that we came to the other option which was to increase the rate. Out of the 11 initial days we wanted the share for eight days. A lot of people came up with their complaints. After that meeting I met with a number of exhibitors, big and small, the latter too complained, and I was trying to make them understand that they hadn’t seen the film; the day they’d watch it the increase in rate would look meager. Finally, we tried to make a fair formula in which the cinema owners’ choice was given importance. We told the cinemas to contribute a bit without facing any problems. Out of the six big players, three agreed, three didn’t. It was their right. We didn’t put pressure on anyone.”

Mr Mandviwalla said he wanted support from every exhibitor. “The problem reared its head when we discussed the matter with those four cinemas who weren’t agreeing with us because we’d already committed ourselves to 34 cinemas that had agreed. Therefore, for us and the producers to go back [on our word] was difficult. The issue led to a lot of speculations. It’s the producers’ film, not mine. I don’t own it. Every strategy went to the producers who picked the workable strategy.”

He said the biggest collection in a week in Pakistan had been for the Indian film Sanju which was Rs18 crore movie. “We wanted to design Maula Jatt in such a way that the film needed to hit the Rs100 crore mark for which Rs40 or 50 crore was essential in the first eight days. What was helping us was the price increase. It was a challenge that I had waited for my entire life. I had a dream that Pakistan’s able to make a perfect film and present it in front of the world. When I saw the film, I thought this is the kind of film which could break any barrier. Right now we don’t have 50 per cent cinemas and yet The Legend of Maula Jatt is creating history. It truly deserves it.”

After his address, the floor was opened for a question and answer session. Replying to one of the queries, he talked about the possibility that the cinemas which haven’t yet screened the film might screen it.

Published in Dawn, October 21st, 2022