The long and short of Brahmastra’s dilemma

One film strongly affected by the pandemic is Brahmastra, the first part of a trilogy, which is also one of the most-anticipated films starring Alia Bhatt, Ranbir Kapoor, Amitabh Bachchan, Mouni Roy and Nagarjuna, with Shah Rukh Khan doing a cameo.

For starters, the first of the trilogy was budgeted at a whopping `300 crore because of the special effects involved in the film as also the number of days the film has been shot for. However, we hear that after the pandemic unlocking has begun, the film studio has not sanctioned the additional budgets producer Karan Johar has asked for in correspondence to the extensive work that the film still needs. One of our sources points out an additional problem that the producers are facing now.

“The pandemic has spared no one, especially the big-budget films, which were budgeted a lot more when they were being made or planned before the worldwide lockdown took place. While the film’s budget was already at `300 crore for a three-hour long film. However, the studio now not only wants the film to be smaller not just in length, but also in budgets. So, they’ve asked producer Karan and director Ayan Mukherji to reduce the length of the film.  The film is a much-anticipated one with the hottest couple in it, it is also looking at more shows per day. So, a long film would mean fewer shows,” explains the source.

With digital platforms habituating viewers to shorter movies, this may well be the future trend for Bollywood films.