Parambrata Chatterjee on Pathaan controversy: If you want to build a movement around it, stop blaming only Pathaan

Shah Rukh Khan, Deepika Padukone, and John Abraham’s Pathaan are still unstoppable at the box office. Besides creating new records every day, the film vroomed into ₹ 200 crore club in just four days. Meanwhile, the current Bengali films, including Dev and Mithun Chakraborty’s Projapoti, Prosenjit Chatterjee and Kaushik Ganguly’s Kaberi Antardhan, and others, have taken a backseat due to ‘run only Pathaan’ diktat from the distributor. The producers of the Bengali films pointed out the 'unethical practice' soon after the release of Pathaan.

Meanwhile, Parambrata Chatterjee, who is in Mumbai gearing up with his release Jehanabad on Sony Liv, identified it as a bigger problem than just a sporadic protest. “This is not the first time it is happening. Earlier, production houses of several other films also had a similar policy. Pathaan is not the first one. Perhaps some South films had the same policy too. It is a distribution strategy and it involves money. It is an unfair practice. But if you want to build a movement around it, stop blaming only Pathaan,” he said. 

Identifying this to be an unfair practice, the Aranyak-actor reminded that a big Bengali production house also has a history of pulling down other smaller films during their big releases. “There is a big production house in Bengal that pulled unfair marketing strategies on others. Everyone does it when in power. If you want to build this movement, you might need a government policy for that. However, that is also not very easy. There are taxation and revenue involved. There are federal taxation policies etc,” he said. 

Meanwhile, Parambrata also questioned the consistent profitability of Bengali films. “If we have the policy to show a Bengali film at a prime time every day, can we ensure to make a Bengali film that will help exhibitors to make money? There are states where you have a policy of showcasing regional films at theatres. Can we produce Bengali films of that standard? Exhibitors might just come and complain that we are not getting enough viewers for Bengali films. One Projapati is there but what about other films? How many hit films do we make? If we get into a debate about commercials, it might become a difficult one,” he said.