Alia Bhatt has found herself at the centre of a Bollywood box office clash that will see two of her biggest films face-off on the same weekend in January.
Last week, Bhatt announced that her upcoming Sanjay Leela Bhansali-directed ‘Gangubai Kathiawadi’ will release in cinemas on January 6. However, a few days later, filmmaker SS Rajamouli also zeroed in on the same weekend to release his magnum opus ‘RRR’, which also stars Bhatt as one of the main protagonists.
The multi-lingual film, which brings together Tollywood actors Ram Charan, Jr NTR and Bollywood stars Ajay Devgn and Bhatt, will drop worldwide on January 7. The movie was earlier scheduled to release in October but was later postponed as many theatres were still not operating across India on account of the pandemic.
While most film studios avoid releasing two big-ticket movies over the same weekend, the pandemic has forced many players to double up as they roll out their much delayed projects nearly a year later.
For Bhatt, having a multi-starrer such as ‘RRR’ release on the same weekend as ‘Gangubai Kathiawadi’ shifts focus away from her author-backed role in the latter where she plays the titular character in the biopic based on the woman who cut a commanding figure in Mumbai’s sex district Kamathipura in the 1960s. The story is based on one of the chapters of author Hussain Zaidi’s book, ‘Mafia Queens of Mumbai’.
It remains to be seen whether a solo vehicle like ‘Gangubai Kathiawadi’ stands up to the might of ‘RRR’.
