Yeh Jo Mohabbat Hai bereft of a wide release

It is sad to see a film like Yeh Jo Mohabbat Hai not getting enough screens for exhibition. Though it has got a few multiplexes but only for a few shows, it is unlike what producer Ashim Samanta had envisaged about. Grouses Samanta, “It seems the multiplex cartel has decided not to release non-star cast films (the film stars Aditya Samanta and Nazia Hussain) because they say that they don’t get numbers. We had not asked for 10 screens in town and the suburbs respectively; we have asked for just one. Alas!” “However, they are kind enough to give us two shows; one in the morning 9 am and the other at 12.15 pm. At least we are better off; Prateek Chakraborty’s From Sydney With Love could not get even one screen. Hence, they have postponed the film’s release to 24 August.” Samanta relates that the condition remains similar outside Mumbai too. “We haven’t got a single screen in Hyderabad, Nagpur, Chandigarh and Jalandhar. In Baroda, we have been allotted one show. However, my film has got as many as 50 to 60 screens in Assam.” When we inquired about this sorry condition of Yeh Joh Mohabbat Hai with Shyam Shroff of Shringar Films, the distributor of the film, he smilingly said, “They should thank their stars that they got some shows; see what happened to the Prateek Chakraborty film? With films like Bol Bachchan, Cocktail, Dark Knight Rises and Ice Age 4 doing pretty well, exhibitors are just not interested to take up non-star cast films for release.” This leaves us with one question. If all this is true, then how come a film like Krishna Aur Kans has got 300 screens all across the country?