Komal Nahta

Rumours are rife that Aamir Khan's Lagaan has been postponed by two weeks. It will now be released on June 15.

When contacted, Ashish, secretary to Aamir Khan, said, "We are still working towards June 1. As of now, the chances of the film being postponed are nil."

Meanwhile, the star has called all the distributors of Lagaan to Bombay this week to discuss the pre-release publicity and the strategies of the film. The actor-producer will personally interact with all his distributors.

Aamir was not available for comment.

The employees demanded a hike in wages, which was not agreeable to cinema owners. Several meetings were held between the owners, workers, their union and the government, but none of them were fruitful.

Ankh lad gayi, composed by Hans Raj Hans, has been added to the film in its third week.

The comedy starring Govinda and Sanjay Dutt is doing great business in Bombay and South, but is not very encouraging in other circuits.

• Yash Chopra is finalising the script of his next film.
• Subhash Ghai is busy completing Yaadein, to be released on July 27.
• Karan Johar will start the next shooting schedule of Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham in London later this week.
• Sooraj Barjatya is busy with the music of his Main Prem Ki Diwani Hoon.
• Rakesh Roshan, having zeroed in on the subject of his next venture after long meetings with his writers, is now holidaying abroad.
• Indra Kumar is yet to finalise the story line of his new film starring Anil Kapoor.
• Rajkumar Santoshi's Lajja was screened in Madras last week by music maestro Ilaiya Raja.
• Sanjay Leela Bhansali is deeply immersed in the making of his love epic, Devdas.
• Ramgopal Varma, Boney Kapoor and Aswini Dutt are spending a lot of time together filming Company. After releasing Pyaar Tune Kya Kiya, Ramu left for Australia on May 1 to scout locations for his next film.

The flip side is that distributors are in a commanding position to dictate terms to exhibitors -- which is totally unfair to the latter. The only other option is to keep their cinemas closed, and that is why exhibitors pay through their noses to acquire films for screening.

The growth of the industry is lopsided. While producers, stars and technicians are minting money, distributors and exhibitors are suffering heavy losses. Of course, the money inflow may not last very long due to the slump in music and satellite markets.

The slack in the market can be proved by this fact: Palanpur, a town in Gujarat, opened a multiplex Surmandir, last week.

A taste of things to come happened on the inaugural day itself: One cinema had to cancel one show (of Rahul) on the first day due to lack of audience.

The admission rates of the multiplex are Rs 30 and Rs 50 as against the more reasonable Rs five, Rs nine and Rs 14 in the three existing cinemas.

Directed by Manobala, Naan Paada Ninnaipadellam, stars Ramesh Aravind and Swarnamalya.

Ramesh, of course, must be hoping to get lucky with this film. The award winning star of Kannada films has, so far, been unable to duplicate the success of his Kannada ventures in Tamil films.