Pakistani film producers recently held a press conference, protesting against the screening of Hollywood film ‘Doctor Strange’, their line of argument being that the Hollywood movie should not have been given any screens, especially on Eid when already five Pakistani films were being released.
According to them, multiple screenings allotted to ‘Doctor Strange’ had badly affected the business of Pakistan’s own cinematic releases, for a lot of people went for the sci-fi film instead of their local content, which were given few screens in comparison.
Actor, director and producer Shamoon Abbasi took to his social media following this press conference, saying that the reason people had been preferring ‘Doctor Strange’ was the content and the quality of the production, something most of the Pakistani filmmakers could never compete with. He added that in order to yield an audience preferring local content over Hollywood stuff like ‘Doctor Strange’, “we need to put in more effort ourselves instead of blaming cinemas for screening them”, as the cinemas would definitely go for what provided them good incentive, something our content producers failed to do for them.
Tangentially, Shamoon Abbasi also expressed disappointment at the fact that all the producers who had now gathered together to raise voice for their Eid releases, were nowhere to be seen when Abbasi’s ‘Durj’ was given an 11:00am slot in the cinemas, and was later turned down even from that slot.
“No one raised a voice when ‘Durj’ was thrown at 11:00am… and everyone conspired against a different movie I made….which was top listed in the selection of Oscars from Pakistan. I was fighting alone to bring different cinema from Pakistan,” he said.
