Siddharth Roy Kapur explains why he chose to release Dev D and Barfi! on a limited number of screens: ‘If you flood screens with a film like that…’

When Komal Nahta pointed out that Anurag Kashyap wished UTV had a wider release for his film Dev D, Siddharth Roy Kapur said, “Anurag has never made that argument to me directly, so I feel it’s hearsay. Dev D is one film where Anurag still receives overflowing cheques. I remember signing many of those. It was a smart release because it was a city-driven film, and we didn’t go too wide because we wanted the occupancy level to be high. We wanted there to be the demand for the film, and at that time, films could keep running on screens; they just didn’t survive for two weeks in a theater. And the film did really well.”

Siddharth revealed following the same strategy for Barfi! despite Ranbir Kapoor and Priyanka Chopra’s strong box office appeal. He said, “We did a limited release for Barfi! too. It was the kind of film we knew would get high occupancy, and we were very confident. If you flood screens with a film like that, you are destroying it. You need to be able to nurture films like that. We were also very particular about the show timings. I was asked this question about why I was releasing Barfi in a limited way because Ranbir was coming off a streak of hits at that time, and Priyanka was successful. But we stuck to our guns, and it really helped.”