It has been almost fifty days since cinemas operated in India especially in Karnataka with complete lockdown due to Coronavirus pandemic. Even as the film industry is expecting to start operating in the coming days following relaxations in the next phase of lockdown, along with certain conditions being imposed, Sandalwood is facing uncertainty over the release of new movies.
While it is hopeful that the State Government could allow the operation of cinemas with conditions to follow safety norms and social distancing measures with minimum attendance from the first week of June, several producers are hesitant to release new movies.
It is said that if producers back off from releasing new movies, the exhibitors will be left with no option but to re-run the recently released movies until the situation returns to normalcy.
In another disappointing news especially for the die-hard fans of Challenging Star Darshan, 'Roberrt' which was expected to release once the lockdown is over, a perfect kind of star movie which could bring back the audiences to theatres, will not hit the theatres at least by another two months.
Speaking to Chitraloka, Roberrt producer Umapathy said, "We had announced the date for April 9th and the later pushed it to May. But, things are not yet normal because of the Coronavirus pandemic. Ours is a very high budget movie and we don't want to take the risk of releasing the movie once the theaters are open. We will take some time and do our internal meeting and then will announce the release date. But for sure not in the next two months."
With the present scenario, Sandalwood might not witness any big star movies hitting the screens for sometime now until the situation returns to normalcy.