Tuesday 20 September 2011

IAF hype lifts Mausam?


Last week, " Mausam" ran into trouble with theIndian Air Force over a few scenes that the IAF was demanding be changed, and the producer crying foul over having taken the force's approval at the scripting stage and saying it was impossible to change them now. 

Of course, the film's generated sufficient curiosity, more so after the delay in its release, which has been pushed from September 16 to 23. But if buzz in the industry is to be believed, the film's team's defiant stand against the IAF may have been a 'stunt' orchestrated to generate eyeballs. There's also another theory doing the rounds, which claims that the team needed time to put final touches to the movie, and this deadlock gave them enough time to finish.

A highly placed source told DT, "There's a research company called Ormax, which gives weekly figures of the buzz that an entertainment product like a movie generates. In the case of "Mausam", the buzz around it grew from 28% to 58%, which means a 100 % increase, courtesy the IAF controversy."

However, the film's producer, Sheetal Talwar, said, "We have also seen the figures and are glad to learn about the jump. But I wish I was as smart a marketer as you are suggesting." Talwar also added that the whole controversy had been addressed and that they have incorporated the changes that the IAF had suggested.

Wing Commander Gerard Galway from the IAF, on the other hand, told us, "They said they will show us the film, but still haven't done so. According to the MoU that we signed with them, they were supposed to show us the movie and take the NoC (No Objection Certificate) from us. We issued them the conditional NoC based on what they showed us, and the changes we had suggested. If they come and show us the completed movie now, we will give them the NoC. But they told us that they have incorporated the changes we suggested, and since they've been caught up because of the film's delay, they are trying to find the time to show us the completed movie."

The different versions by the two parties, and later, the ease with which the producer agreed to the suggestions, has got people thinking, says our source, adding, "They have no plans as of now to show the movie to the IAF. However, they have made changes to the sequence in question. In fact, initially, they had shown the movie in two parts to the IAF, and when they had shown the second part on September 7, it was still not complete, and they had agreed to make changes. But publicly, they denied that they had agreed. This discrepancy between the two versions was apparent. However, the ease with which the changes have now been incorporated hint at some other plan. Perhaps they needed time to finish the movie, or perhaps they wanted to generate some hype."

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