Recognised for excellence in leading production houses on NewsX India A-List, Vivek Krishnani, Managing Director, Sony Pictures India recently joined us for an insightful chat. In the exclusive conversation with NewsX, Vivek Krishnani spoke to us about the success of Spiderman: No way home, films that are driving people to the cinema post pandemic and much more.
Speaking about starting the year 2022 with the roaring success of Spiderman: No Way Home amid uncertainty over its release due to Covid-19 pandemic, Vivek Krishnani said, “We at Sony are really happy with way the year is headed. When we started planning for this back in September last year, the theatres were closed. We were very anxious about what is going to happen with our biggest release of the year. In October, if you see, when Hollywood films paved the way, the exhibition started and then we had Venom, which released in October and it did really well. That gave us the confidence in the fact that people are coming back to cinemas and they are really embracing a film that basically provides good content and good entertainment. We saw that happen when a few local films released as well.”
“I think, at the end of the day, when we went in with Spiderman, what we realised is that the film already had a huge nostalgia value attached to it. It had a huge amount of newness in it, in terms of what the film had to offer and that we saw when the trailer released. It actually broke the Internet. It gave us huge number of views in a span of 24 hours. That really caught the fancy of people globally. Slowly and steadily, we saw the hype building, Finally, the dams broke when we opened the advances on 12th of December. It was something that was never-seen-before experience; for a film to get advance bookings, this kind of love and support from the audiences. We have really been happy with the way that the film has turned out and the love that people have given it at the box office”, he added.
When asked if he has seen a trend of good Hollywood films doing well at the box office, Vivek Krishnani responded, “What is happening is that by all imagination, good content is working. Whether it is Hollywood content or local film content, that is immaterial. We have seen that happen even in the past when regional films have released and they have done extremely well. Sooryavanshi released and it did really well as well. Now that Spiderman has released, it has done exceedingly well too. At the end of the day, it is the victory of content and it is basically where people are understanding now what kind of content will get them to the theatres. That is very important. We have to very careful as filmmakers and content creators to understand what will motivate audiences to come back into theatres. That’s what we are saying. Films that have huge spectacle, large VFX, in terms of good visual range, those are the films that are driving people to the cinema. Plus, Films that have a connect with audiences, something that they haven’t seen before is getting people into cinema.”