No point in competing with Chennai Express, says Imran Khan

Actor feels that there is no need to stress over having his film release right after Shahrukh Khan’s.

MUMBAI: Eid has always been a witness to big-budgeted movies competing against each other and surprisingly, most of the time, it’s one SRK movie against the other. Keeping in line with what seems to have become more of a tradition now, Bollywood’s two much-awaited movies, Chennai Express and Once Upon A Time in Mumbai Dobaara, are releasing just a week apart from each other around Eid.

While viewers and critics feel that intense competition between the two is likely, actor Imran Khan sees no point in competing. Imran is not worried because he believes that films nowadays receive a major portion of their box office returns within the first weekend of release itself.

“They [Chennai Express team] are releasing [the film] a week apart, so I don’t see any cause for stress. The fact is that nowadays, films do a majority of their business on their first weekend [of release],” said Imran, at the cover launch of the Stardust magazine.

“By the time you reach the second weekend, they are already trailing out, so it’s not even competition. The market has grown, the exhibitors have multiplied ten folds since the past, and there are a huge number of theatres now,” he added.

Meanwhile, with majority of the films doing well at the box office, Imran is not interested in tapping the economics.

“I am not at all bothered (by box office figures) because it ultimately makes a difference to the producers and distributors (of the film),” said Imran, adding that he sticks to what is an “actor’s job”.

“My job is to do my scenes from action to cut. Then I have to turn up to promote my film, but beyond that, it’s not actually in my hands. The director is the one who is making the film and the producer is the one who is marketing it so, these things are their expertise, and I don’t enter into that space,” he asserted.

Directed by Rohit Shetty, Chennai Express is a comedy and features superstar Shahrukh Khan and Deepika Padukone, while Once Upon A Time In Mumbai Dobaara is a gangster drama and features Akshay Kumar and Sonakshi Sinha in the lead, besides Imran Khan.

Chennai Express will hit the screens on August 9 while Once Upon A Time In Mumbai Dobaara is scheduled to release on August 15.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 2^nd, 2013.

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