Vidhu Vinod Chopra: Can’t make Big B dance in public for film promotion

Dancing at public places and malls for film promotion has become a trend of sorts, but it’s not something filmmaker Vidhu Vinod Chopra is willing to resort to, especially with an actor like Amitabh Bachchan.

“Today, it is like a trend that to promote a film, you have to dance in malls. Otherwise people would barely notice that the film is going to release. But from where we come, I feel weird to ask Mr Bachchan to do promotion in this manner.

“I can’t make him dance in public place for the sake of promotion of my film,” said the Wazir producer, who has adapted a unique way to push his movie.

Disclosing his strategy for the film’s marketing, he said, “I am screening Wazir for media people, and I can do that as film marketing. I am showing my work and I think nobody would promote a film in this way... screening 15 minutes of a film before releasing.

“I’ve shown the entire film to the 60-70 programmers who distribute films in India. They were surprised to learn that the full movie would be screened for them. Whoever came for interviewing actors of Wazir, were shown 15 minutes of the film, so they must know about the film and make people aware of Wazir.”

On being asked if this is a sign of confidence, he quipped: “We are Munnabhai, whatever we do, we do it with full of confidence.”

Featuring Bachchan and Farhan Akhtar, Wazir is co-written by Chopra and Abhijat Joshi and is directed by Bejoy Nambiar. The film releases in UAE on Thursday.