Bangladesh Shows Thumbs Down to Copied Films
RBN Web Desk: In a major decision that could have a far reaching impact on the content of films produced and distributed in Bangladesh, an unified front of the film industry in the neighbouring country, has decided not to approve the production of copied films. The decision is likely to come as a big blow to cheap Bengali remakes of south Indian films that are often jointly produced by India and Bangladesh.
The Bangladesh Chalachitra Paribar (BCP), a platform of 16 film industry associations, are also unlikely to approve projects in the future that are heavily tilted towards India—both in terms of artistes and crew, and locations—and passed off as Indo-Bangla joint productions.
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A new, more dynamic BCP governing body, has reportedly replaced the earlier functionaries who were largely inactive in this regard.
According to sources, a number of copied films from other Indian languages, like Ashok Pati’s Inspector NottyK and Abhimanyu Mukherjee’s Noor Jahaan, bombed at the box office this year. While the former was the remake of Anurag Singh’s 2013 Punjabi romantic comedy film Jatt & Juliet 2, Noor Jahan was the unofficial Bengali version of Nagraj Manjule’s 2016 Marathi superhit Sairat. Both the copied films were Indo-Bangla joint ventures.
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Not only in Bangladesh, distributors and hall owners in West Bengal too have complained of huge losses in exhibiting such films on this side of the border. They rued that actors and actresses from Bangladesh, who feature as the lead in these copied films, have no brand recall in the state and the audience can’t identify them.
It has been learnt that all directors of Indo-Bangla coproductions, from now onward, have to submit their scripts before a special review committee of the BCP. The committee will scrutinise all projects to the last detail before approving them.
The Bangladesh film industry is passing through a lean phase with film productions down, and Indo-Bangla joint ventures taking over the theatres, without much box office success.
