When Shah Rukh's film can make it to the theatres for Diwali, why can't my film release on the same day?
Festive seasons are good for releases, but we have to leave some festival dates for other producers to release their films as well. We cannot take away all the holiday releases.
Going after any movie there is a lot of competition to try and get it.
The filmmakers aren't running the studios anymore. Sometimes people who like films are making them, but by and large, they have to go report quarterly earnings and all that stuff. The competition is so huge that it's very hard to get people to show up to see any movie in the theater, much less an original one that isn't a version of something else they saw.
I have such amazing memories [about The Hotel New Hampshire movie], because Tony Richardson was such an amazing director, and the subject matter was so bizarre, and yet it was the most sought-after part at that moment. And then it had the good fortune to come out on the same day as Splash.
They do think it is a big summer movie and that's why they want to give it a great chance, but they don't want to go up against Spider-Man 2 or some of the other big movies, the $100 million films that are coming up.
When television killed comedy and love stories, the movie makers went in slugging. They offered the downbeat, the degenerate as competition. This seems to me to be a sad campaign for Hollywood to use to combat box office disaster.
Sometimes we postpone releases because of another big film or some other reasons. In the end, the big film, too, postpones, and the impact is on the small films. So once you decide on a release date, you have to go ahead with it.
