Rana Daggubati says India’s low screen count is triggered by rising real estate cost

Actor Rana Daggubati, who is known for ‘Arrambam’, ‘Baahubali: The Beginning’, ‘Baby’, ‘Housefull 4’ and others, has shared his insights on the Indian entertainment industry’s eternal problem of a diminishing screen count.Rana spoke with IANS ahead of the release of ‘All We Imagine as Light’ which won the Grand Prix at the 77th Cannes Film Festival.

Rana, who is presenting the film to the audience across the country, told IANS, “India is definitely very very underscreened. In terms of the number of screens it has, 14, 000 is a very large number. India has only about 6000-8000 working screens, the rest are all diminishing in many ways. Out of which, a large part of it is in Andhra and Telangana, the areas that I live in.

He further mentioned, “But no, we just feel like it can be much more. Screens for different kinds of people, and the number of people that are around”.

He then pointed toward the axel that drives the problem of screen count: India’s real estate market.

The actor told IANS, “It would solve that problem but India’s real estate is not as cheap as the rest of the world. We have less land, and many people unlike the USA or China which have much more land mass than us. We can build many more things. So that would change. But it’s like a chicken and egg. Look at the cinemas now. Every festival we are over full”.

“And we feel like there is no space for new films. But the rest of the year as exhibitors. We just sit idle because there is no film. It’s that trick that we are falling in, I just feel like. Unless exhibitors also know that there is more cinema that they can play, different types of audience that they can reach out to, different types of marketing techniques, that they can start exploring”, he added.

‘All We Imagine as Light’ is set to arrive in cinemas in India on November 22.

‘Bigg Boss 18’: Salman Khan calls out Ashneer Grover over his ‘dogalapan’

Bollywood superstar Salman Khan will be seen schooling entrepreneur and former Shark Tank India judge Ashneer Grover in the upcoming Weekend Ka Vaar episode of ‘Bigg Boss 18’.A promo shared by the channel, showcased Salman bashing Grover. It begins with the “Dabangg” star welcoming Grover on the stage and then questions him about his infamous comments.

“Maine aapke baare mein suna hai ki aapne mujhe sign kiya tha. Sab figures bhi aapne galat bataye. Toh phir yeh dogalapan kya hai? (I heard you talk about signing me and mentioning all the wrong figures. So what is this dogalapan?)” Salman asks Ashneer.

To which, Ashneer replied: “Aapko jo brand ambassador kiya (I made you the brand ambassador), I think that was one of the smartest moves.”

It doesn’t stop there as Salman then bashes him more by saying: “Yeh jo attitude ab hai, tab wahan nahi dikha tha (This attitude you are showing now wasn’t apparent back then).”

Grover claims that his words were taken out of context during the appearance in the podcast.

For those who don’t know last year, Grover had appeared on “Vagehra Vagehra” podcast, where he spoke about his meeting with Salman, which he had also publicly discussed before.

In that video, he had shared: “Usko humne sponsor rakha tha, uske shoot ke liye mila tha, usko brief karne ke liye company ke baare mein. Teen ghante baitha tha uske saath, uske manager ne bol diya photo nahi khichwani, sir thoda bura maan jaate hain.”

“Maine bola nahi khichwaunga photo, bhaad mein jaa tu, aisi kaunsi heropanti hogayi (We wanted him to endorse our brand, I met him for the ad shoot and sat with him for three hours. His manager told me I couldn’t take a picture with him because he might get irritated, and I thought, ‘Fine, he can go to hell’).”