
Bollywood: Coronavirus brings India's mega movie industry to standstill
Bollywood: Coronavirus brings India's mega movie industry to standstill
With the world at a standstill because of Covid-19, India's Hindi film industry is seeing abandoned film sets, closed cinemas and movie stars with empty diaries. BBC Asian Network's Haroon Rashid reports on the impact on Bollywood.
This time last month, Bollywood fans around the world were excited. The latest instalment of director Rohit Shetty's super-cop universe was set to hit the screens on 24 March. The makers of Sooryavanshi were expecting massive box office numbers because the release had been strategically planned to coincide with a national holiday in India.
Instead, the country went into a 21-day lockdown that day to stop the spread of coronavirus.
Sooryavanshi's release was postponed indefinitely. So was that of 83, director Kabir Khan's sports biopic about India's World Cup-winning cricket team, starring real-life superstar couple Ranveer Singh and Deepika Padukone. The film was to premiere on 10 April.
Speaking on the YouTube channel, Film Companion, Khan said it had been "very disappointing" to make that call.
"We were really itching to show the film to the world. But some things are way bigger than all this. The whole planet today is on standstill so I think watching a film becomes a much lower priority."