Netaji failed at box office as it wasn’t promoted: Benegal
(No Ratings Yet)Veteran filmmaker Shyam Benegal believes his last film — ‘Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose: The Forgotten Hero’ — did not get the box-office collections it deserved as it was poorly promoted.
“The film was not released too well. It was not promoted properly. There was no marketing either, which is important in these times,” he told PTI, cautious enough not to blame anyone for the debacle.
“It is difficult for me to hazard a guess. I would not know why the film was never promoted the way it should have been. You know, people did not even know when the film got released.” Fortunately for him, the three and a half hour biographical film capturing the last five years of Netaji will be “re-released” on television on the Independence Day this year.
Benegal, however is not new to television as it was this medium where he got a chance to display his artistic genius in serials like ‘Bharat ek Khoj’ and ‘Yatra’.
“That was an interesting time in public broadcasting,” muses the 72-year-old.
“There were not many channels back then. The six programmes on national broadcaster Humlog, Buniyaad, Tamas, Ramayan, Mahabharata and ‘Bharat ek Khoj’ were all so well-made and equally good. Can you remember any other serial after that that could in any way match these six?,” asks Benegal.
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