Film-makers may have to rewrite shooting script

Mumbai: Many Bollywood producers and studios consider 2020 a washout as the film industry has come to a standstill amid disrupted production schedules, mounting costs and continued delays in theatre exhibition, even as they formulate safety protocols to restart shooting. Unlike TV production, where most of the shoots are done inside studios with limited set of people, shooting for films involves much bigger sets and a lot of people.

While Producers Guild of India has come up with new safety protocols and standard operating procedures (SOPs), it’s a given that film making is going to get costlier and more time consuming than before. As a result, most of the films currently under production are expected to take at least one year to hit the cinemas, probably between June and November next year, some producers told ET. “There will just be 3-4 tent-pole films left for releasing in a theatre over the next nine months and film production is not expected to kick start for another 2-3 months,” a leading producer said on conditions of anonymity.