PVR INOX’s Aamer Bijli on ‘Dhurandhar 2’ Vs ‘Toxic’ Battle: ‘Not Too Challenging For Us!’ (EXCLUSIVE)

The impending epic clash between Yash starrer “Toxic” and Ranveer Singh’s “Dhurandhar 2” has cinephiles and fans all agog and curious about which way this will go. While both tentpole movies, releasing on the Eid weekend on March 19, are expected to be record-smashers at the ticket windows, the division of screens might be one of the issues in the box-office battle.

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PVR INOX’s Aamer Bijli on ‘Dhurandhar 2’ Vs ‘Toxic’ Battle: ‘Not Too Challenging For Us!’ (EXCLUSIVE)

However, Aamer Bijli, Lead Specialist – Innovation, Film Marketing & Digital Programming, PVR INOX Ltd, tells Variety India that there won’t be any challenges for him because of the unique positioning of his cinema chains’ screens that allows for spacing out these films.

“Due to the unique positioning of our screens and our spread, which is tier 1, tier 2 cities, we have a very robust pipeline and current screen mix in the South, which accounts for about 33% of our entire screen population, followed by North (27%), West (21%), Central (11%), and East (8%).  So, ideally, it would be great to space them out, but we don't find it too challenging because of the screen count and the variety that we can program very efficiently,” shares Bijli.

He also explains how the audience revels in these clashes and coins new terms for them. “We have a lot of different timings, many different regions, so it works out quite well. And people like it. People like coining terms like ‘Barbenheimer’ (“Barbie” and “Oppenheimer”), what they're doing with “Avengers: Doomsday” and “Dune,” which is called ‘Dunesday’. So, sometimes these collaboration release dates offer strong momentum. But ideally, we would like them to be spread apart,  but it's not an issue in terms of programming to have them together,” adds Aamer. Interestingly, filmmaker Ram Gopal Varma has termed the coin for these two biggies as 'Dhuroxic'.

While the Geetu Mohandas directorial, “Toxic”, also features Nayanthara, Rukmini Vasanth, Kiara Advani, Tara Sutaria and Huma Qureshi in prominent roles, the sequel to “Dhurandhar” will see Arjun Rampal, Sanjay Dutt and Sara Arjun reprising their roles.