MUMBAI: Ashutosh Gowariker and UTV’s forthcoming movie Jodhaa Akbar’s theatrical promo will hit theatres on 12 October with 1125 prints. The movie will release worldwide on 25 January, 2008.
UTV has already commenced work on the promotional activities, 15 weeks prior to the release in order to reach out to their audience.
“The marketing of a film like Jodhaa Akbar needs to be treated differently from other films and this is one of the key reasons why the promotional activities started so early,” says UTV Software Communications chairman Ronnie Screwvala.
While the theatrical promo will be unveiled on 12 October, the television promos will be released a month later. The music of the film is slated to release on 27 November.
Rumours have been rife about UTV being open to selling the distribution rights of Jodhaa Akbar for Rs 80 crore, but no deal has been clinched now. Informs Siddharth Roy Kapur, “If someone offers us a price that it too tough to reject, we will handover the distribution rights. If not, then we do have an infrastructure to distribute our own movies. In the end, the decision has to be commercially viable.”
Jodhaa Akbar started as a story written by Haider Ali and was narrated to Ashutosh Gowariker even before he made Swades. After immense pre-production work ranging from research to permissions, the story began filming on 6 November, 2006 in Rajasthan.
About the movie Gowariker says, “The film is an epic love story, it is not a historical movie per se, although it is set in that premise and period. It is a movie that will appeal a lot to the youth of today, primarily because in the movie I have shown Hrithik play Akbar from 13 to 18 years of age.”
Jodhaa Akbar is the story of the greatest Mughal emperor that ruled Hindustan, Jalaluddin Mohammad Akbar and the fiery young Rajput princess, Jodhaa.
Set in the 16th century, this epic romance begins as marriage of alliance between two cultures and religions, for political gain, with King Bharmal of Amer giving his daughter’s hand to Emperor Akbar. From the battlefield where the young Jalaluddin was crowned, through the conquests that won him the title of Akbar the Great, to winning the love of the beautiful Jodhaa, Jodhaa Akbar traces the graph of the mighty emperor and his romance with the defiant princess.
