Happy New Year will set a record, will beat Bang Bang
Happy New Year
This Gandhi Jayanthi, Eid and Dassara; we were hit with the Bang Bang wave in addition to a smaller but stronger Haider wave. Film goers didn’t know what hit them. Before they are able to pick themselves up and dry off, what do they see? Another wave, and this time it’s bigger, badder and is unceremoniously called Happy New Year! Said to be releasing on more than 6,000 screens worldwide, Happy New Year will be the most widely released Bollywood Blockbuster yet.
Produced by Red Chillies Entertainment and distributed by Yash Raj Films, Happy New Year will release as the only film in theatres this Diwali break. We had reported earlier that Hollywood hunks Ben Affleck and Brad Pitt would battle Shah Rukh’s Happy New Year at the box office. But recently we learnt that Pitt’s Fury dubbed as Fauji. And Affleck’s Gone Girl that released this October 3 will be postponed to make way for Farah Khan’s movie.
With big-shot directors, producers, distributors and of course, actors; we don’t even have to say we smell a conspiracy to monopolize the market. Earlier, we also heard that Rekha’s Super Nani had chickened out and postponed their already overdue release. Just read the review of Sonali Cable and you’ll know what we mean.
Starring the talents of Shah Rukh Khan, Abhishek Bachchan, Deepika Padukone, Boman Irani, Sonu Sood, Vivaan Shah and Anupam Kher; Happy New Year will surpass Bang Bang, Kick and Dhoom 3. The movie will release this week on as many as 5,000 screens in India and 1,000 screens abroad, making that a whopping 6,000 screens worldwide.
Director Farah Khan has worked previously with actor Shah Rukh Khan and Deepika Padukone in Om Shanti Om and exclusively with ShahRukh in Main Hoon Na, whereas Shah Rukh and Deepika have sizzled on the sets of Chennai Express.
In order to extend their reach even further, Happy New Year will be dubbed in Tamil and Telugu. The dubbed versions are said to amount to 4,500-4,700 screens in India, surpassing Kick’s records.
The film will, in fact be releasing in the foreign markets of UK, North America and West Asia on Diwali day, a whole day before it is released in India. This is owing to the festival of Diwali traditionally seeing less movie goers.
With films like Dhoom 3 and Krrish 3 last year and Bang Bang and Kick this year setting records of their own, Happy New Year has gone one step further and promoted the film with all it has. The film has been marketed to the brink, especially when it comes to digital media. Read about Happy New Year promotional strategies here.