'How can distributors force their way?'

The four-week drought precipitated by the ongoing deadlock between producers and distributors seems at an end. Though, officially, the producers' boycott against the distributors of West Bengal, Bihar, Punjab and the Delhi-UP circuits is still on, the producers are going ahead with their releases.

After Mahesh Manjrekar's decision to release Praan Jaye Par Shaan Na Jaye (Raveena Tandon, Namrata Shirodkar, Sushmita Sen, Mahesh Manjrekar) on May 1 in all centres barring the four offending circuits, May 9 sees the release of the teen campus musical Ishq Vishk (Shahid Kapoor, Amrita Rao, Shenaz Treasurywala), and producer Arjun Hingorani's Kaise Kahoon Ke Pyar Hai  (Sharbani Mukherji, Sunny Deol) that will launch his son Amit. This time, the films release across the country with no boycott of any of the centres.

To save face, the four Mumbai-based producers associations  -- the Indian Motion Picture Producers Association, Western India Film Producers Association, Association of Motion Pictures and Television Programme Producers and the Producers Guild -- spearheading the boycott have 'allowed' producers to release their films as long as they don't sign papers giving in to the distributors' 'absurd' demand to withhold selling the television and cable rights of the film for as long as they (the distributors) think fit.

Kumar Taurani, who has produced Ishq Vishk, is peeved with the strike. "The distributors can't force me to sign an affidavit. If they insist on one, we'll form a new association. Whoever wants to buy our films will have to be register themselves with the new association.

"When there are two parties involved in an undertaking, how can one party force the other to do things their way?" he fumes. "I have a product to sell. The distributors come to buy it. How can they decide whether I want to sell satellite rights for my film  a month or six months after its release? A film is like any other consumer product, take it or leave it. No law allows associations to form their own policies. The strike has ended from the producers' side. We've already opened the advance booking [for Ishq Vishk] all over the country."

Next Friday, May 16, sees the release of debutante director Honey Irani's Armaan (Amitabh Bachchan, Anil Kapoor, Preity Zinta, Gracy Singh) and Tigmanshu Dhulia's Haasil (Jimmy Shergill, Hrishitaa Bhatt, Irfan Khan).

Suneel Darshan, producer of Andaaz (Akshay Kumar, Lara Dutta, Priyanka Chopra), isn't willing to wait any longer either. "Andaaz will release on May 23. It doesn't make any sense to hold on any longer. It has been a terrible time for all of us. This kind of deadlock between filmmakers and distributors at a time when we had just surfaced the [cricket] World Cup is unforgivable. The promos have been on for months. We can't wait any longer."

Neither can Ram Gopal Varma, whose Bhoot (Ajay Devgan, Urmila Matondkar, Rekha, Nana Patekar, Fardeen Khan) will release soon after Andaaz.

Says Taurani, "The distributors have no stake in the forthcoming releases. They haven't invested any money in Ishq Vishk, Armaan or Andaaz. I don't think the strike makes sense any longer. It has to end now."