20 shows for Vinay Rajkumar’s 10 in Bengaluru and barely any takers

Vinay Rajkumar has a release tomorrow. In better times, there would have been a lot of fanfare surrounding the film, but these are not those times. The film, 10, is a Pushkar Films production, which, according to the grapevine, has been in financial doldrums in the last few years, ever since the box office debacle that was Avane Srimannarayana.

There was a time when Pushkara Mallikarjunaiah and his production house were seen as flagbearers of content-oriented cinema made on budgets that each deserved. Everyone who has worked with him describes him as a ‘passionate filmmaker’ – his filmography bears testimony to that, given that he has backed movies like Godhi Banna Sadharana Mykattu, Kirik Party, Jeerjimbe and Avatara Purusha, among others. Unfortunately, passion alone does not suffice in the film industry, there needs to be luck too, and that does not seem to be favouring him currently.

Only a week ago, Pushkara announced the release of 10, which, beside being a Vinay Rajkumar film, is also the directorial debut of Kirik Party cinematographer Karm Chawla. The announcement was through a social media post, which he followed up with the first video song, Enaagide, the trailer and then another song. Director Karm took to Instagram to share an image of heroine Anusha Ranganath, with an accompanying caption that the team has no money to do any publicity. The film, about the pitfalls of boxing follows the story of a disgraced boxer, for which Vinay spent six months in preparation to carry off the body language of a featherweight athlete is now up for release on a day when most others would not.

December 16 is when James Cameron’s Avatar: The Way of Water is in theatres. In India, it is releasing in English, Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam and Kannada. After a lot of hue and cry about the number of screens allotted to the Kannada version, Avatar 2 has quite a few shows in Bengaluru. In fact, between the 2D and 3D allocations, it has far more shows than what 10 has. A quick check on online booking sites gives 10 an estimated 20 shows in the city, most of which are not at conducive time slots. These 20 shows are spread across 18-odd screens and sadly enough, there are hardly any bookings so far.

On social media, netizens have been asking Pushkar not to release the film at this time, and take it directly to OTT instead. Vinay, they say, deserves a better release for his film.