It was 2003, two weeks after Shah Rukh Khan's Jawan had stormed the box office. On a half-empty BEST bus one night in Mumbai, I saw a man utterly engrossed in a pixelated copy of the film on his mobile. Curiosity piqued, I asked where he'd found the copy. He explained that local mobile shops were charging 10 rupees for it. Why, I asked, didn’t he just go to the theatre?
Turns out, six, sometimes seven days a week, he left for work at five in the morning and returned exhausted about eight at night. I glanced at my watch. It was 8:30. Between the brutal schedule and the money he sent back to his family in Bihar, a theatrical ticket—which for a hit film could soar to an obscene ₹1000—was not an expense; it was an impossibility.
If you were to tell this story in the air-conditioned offices of Andheri producers, ones with expensive cars in the basement, they would see only a villain, a pirate, a thief stealing from their rightful coffers. But my experience on that bus, and countless others, has made me aware of a more complex, more human truth.
This man wasn't a pirate; he was a fan, finding a way to be part of a cultural moment from which his economic reality excluded him. He was, back then, proving a point that the industry is only now beginning to grasp, not through moralising, but a surprising, lucrative trend: the blockbuster rerelease.
To understand this, consider the curious case of Sanam Teri Kasam. Upon its initial release in 2016, it made Rs 16 crores against a Rs 18-crore budget. It was a certified flop, written off, forgotten. Nine years later, it was rereleased in theatres and minted over double its original lifetime collection.
Let me reiterate that this wasn't a secret, restored classic, but was available in excellent quality on OTT and, indeed, for free on YouTube. Yet, people like my niece, who had watched it multiple times earlier, flocked to the cinemas. They went for the same reason people have always gone to churches, mosques and temples: a communal experience you cannot replicate in your living room.
This leads us to two vital realisations. First, that piracy's impact on a film's ultimate commercial destiny is wildly overstated. It is a convenient scapegoat for a more profound failure: the failure to connect. The second is that a good film is a timeless asset. It works, no matter when you release it, because genuine emotional resonance has no expiry date.
This year has been a masterclass in this posthumous glory.
While expensive, star-studded new films tanked, cinematic ghosts from the past returned to lay claim to the box office. Tumbbad found its true audience only after its first theatrical flop run ended, and this year made over Rs 30 crores on rerelease. Khaleja, Baahubali, Jalsa and Aarya 2 were among the Telugu films that minted gold alongside many Tamil and Malayalam films.
What, then, is going on?
The answer lies in a fundamental shift in what audiences calculate. Going to the cinema is no longer a casual habit, but an expensive, time-consuming decision. I used to be a once-a-week theatregoer; post-pandemic, I go once a month. The barrier isn't money for me; it's the scarcity of time, the instant availability on OTT, travel time to theatres, and the sheer risk of betting three hours on shoddy screenwriting and direction.
Every trip to the multiplex, at least for me, now must come with a guarantee of return on investment. And what better guarantee than a film you already know you love? There are dozens of films for which I would buy a ticket in a heartbeat if they were rereleased, to experience them as they were meant to be seen.
This brings us to the second, almost spiritual aspect of a rerelease: the congregation. Watching a beloved film in a theatre packed with fellow devotees is, without doubt, the purest cinematic experience of our lives, a union of shared taste, a collective intake of synchronised laughter and tears, almost like going to a concert.
If American Beauty were to be rereleased, I would watch it every day, not just to admire its craft, which I have done at least a dozen times so far, but to commiserate with viewers who see in the film what I see. It's a beautiful, unquantifiable experience that no 85-inch television, or a Blu-Ray pirated rip can ever hope to replicate.
This inspires me to make an earnest, perhaps naïve, plea to the producers. You are the investors, the risk-takers, and for that, the world owes you a debt. But you must realise, internalise a fundamental truth: more than stars, more than marketing blitz, a film's soul—and thus its long-term value—is forged by the four horsemen against apocalypse: the writer, director, cinematographer, and editor.
When you finance a film, you are fundamentally betting on these four. Stars, casts, crew and trends can shift, but if this creative quartet is in sync, you will have a winner in your hands, even if it bombs on first release, and takes a decade—or two—for the world to realise it.
So, dear producer, let them craft the film they want to craft. Of course, be a sounding board. Reign in the runaway budgets, for we creators, in our quest for perfection, can at times forget that cinema is also a business. Provide the resources, manage the P&A, but what you shouldn't do is interfere in the creative alchemy of the team, because if you do, you don't just risk killing the film's first release; you murder its potential for a glorious resurrection, its chance to become a Sanam Teri Kasam or a Tumbbad.
I suspect, however, that this is just a pipe dream, and that nothing will fundamentally change on the ground, in the studios where films are made. Instead of learning the right lesson of trusting artists, the greedy producers will see, in a rerelease, a new revenue stream for their old mistakes. They will fantasise about rerereleases and rererereleases, hoping to monetise their past mediocrity, forever chasing gold for the utter crap their interference helped manifest. They will have missed the point entirely.
The man watching a pirated copy of Jawan on the bus wasn't the problem. He was merely an audience desperate for a story that deserved his every penny and his precious three hours. The rerelease success phenomenon is his message, forcefully delivered. It is a simple, poignant reminder: make good films. Truly good films. The audience is waiting, not just for the first show, but for the one, years, perhaps decades later, that would feel like a homecoming.
