As India enters its second phase of lockdown, the entertainment industry, which has been hit pretty hard, has to re-evaluate their ongoing and future projects. Producer Ravi Bhagchandka, who is currently developing the Hindi adaptation to George McCutcheon’s 1902 book, Brewster's Millions, feels that shooting abroad, once the coronavirus has been contained for awhile, may have to be stopped.
Many producers will have to think about the films already in production, how do they go about wrapping it up? For future projects, a foreign location might have to be reconsidered.
Bhagchandka says it might be difficult, if not impossible, for some time to come. "I find it very hard to imagine that any producer would invest in taking a crew abroad when there are likely to be major impediments to travelling internationally. Not just that, the fear of the virus still being active in different parts of the world is a concern that most producers are likely to have till a cure is found for the coronavirus," he said.
For the producer’s previous project, the documentary Sachin: A Billion Dreams (2017), he had travelled easily across the world to put the film together. In fact, for a number of his projects that are in the development stage, Bhagchandka had been mulling foreign locales.
"The reason why a large number of films had been shot abroad is that foreign countries offer attractive incentives and subsidies for films to be shot there. For an aspirational Indian audience, these foreign locations make the film look even exotic and richer in look and feel. But now scripts would have to be rewritten and the foreign locations under consideration will have to be re-evaluated," he added.
The script for the Hindi adaptation to George McCutcheon’s 1902 book, Brewster's Millions by Balwinder Singh Janjua is ready and Bhagchandka is looking for a director and cast.