Generally, when more than one big-ticket Hindi films are released on the same day, the shows of already running films, especially those in regional languages, are curtailed. But the opposite has happened with Hemant Dhome’s Marathi movie Jhimma (2021), which was released on 19 November.
When the Salman Khan-starrer Antim: The Final Truth (2021) and the John Abraham-starrer Satyameva Jayate 2 (2021) were released last week, exhibitors reduced the number of shows for Jhimma to accommodate the new films which were expected to do well. However, after Satyameva Jayate 2 crashed and Antim did not do too well either, Jhimma's shows have been increased again.
Sunny Chandiramani from Sunshine Studios, the distributors for Jhimma, told Cinestaan, “The day Antim and Satyameva Jayate 2 were released, Jhimma had around 300 shows a day [in Maharashtra]. After both films got a poor response, our film has got over 700 shows a day now. We got a lot of shows of both films in single-screen theatres. A few theatres [in central Mumbai] like Citylight, Gold Cinema and [Mukta] Jai Hind are now screening as many as three shows when earlier there was just one.”
He added, “The film is doing well even in places like Andheri [in northwestern Mumbai] where Marathi films generally don’t do well. People are writing on social media and tagging us saying they are watching the film more than once.”
Jhimma is about a group of seven women (played by Suhas Joshi, Sonalee Kulkarni, Kshitee Jog, Nirmiti Sawant, Sayali Sanjeev, Suchitra Bandekar and Mrinmayee Deshpande) who go on a trip to London and experience the meaning of freedom. Siddharth Chandekar plays the owner of the travel company that organizes the trip.
Despite the characters in the film being from an urban background, Chandiramani said the film has done well even in smaller centres like Sangli, Nashik, Kolhapur, Aurangabad and Nagpur.
Jhimma has also been released outside Maharashtra. Confirming this, Dhome said, “It has been released in places like Bengaluru, Goa, Belgaum, Baroda, Ahmedabad, Surat, Indore, Delhi, NOIDA, etc.”
Chandiramani added, “Baroda has got us amazing response. It is a big deal for a Marathi film to run for three weeks in Gujarat. Some of our shows in Goa were taken away because of the International Film Festival of India that happened there, but we have got them back after the festival got over.”
Abrar Memon, an exhibitor from Pune who runs single-screen theatres Victory, Vasant, Neelayam and Rahul, said the film is doing well. “Even the multiplexes that had earlier given it just one or two shows have now given them five to six shows," he said. "It is doing better business than the two Hindi films [Antim and Satyameva Jayate 2].”
Chandiramani said Jhimma is tentatively set to have around 380 shows in Maharashtra from tomorrow as it enters its third week.