MUMBAI: This February, Friday the 13th will see two movies of different genres hitting the silver screen. While one is the much awaited Red Chillies Entertainment’s Billu Barber, the other is Kaleidoscope Entertainment’s The Stoneman Murders.
 
Since the latter is pitted against a Shah Rukh Khan movie (even though he has a special appearance in it); Kaleidoscope Entertainment is going all out to promote its film, which stars Kay Kay and Arbaaz Khan and is directed by Manish Gupta. The movie is slated to release with approximately 300 prints (200 physical and 100 digital) in India.
 
"We are going very wide for a film of this size. Our marketing budget is about Rs 50 million (Rs 5 crores). Our target audience is fundamentally different from Billu Barber and in any case, by now I think our industry is ready to support two films on the same weekend. Moreover, last year was the year of small films and a lot of these did great business as compared to some of the big ones. Even this year, Raaz – The Mystery Continues has outdone Chandni Chowk To China in relative terms. We think we can prevail on the strength of our content," Kaleidoscope Entertainment CEO Bobby Bedi tells Businessofcinema.com.
 
The Stoneman Murders is based on the real life incident that took place in Mumbai and hence Kaleidoscope is pushing its movie promotions in Mumbai. "We are heavily targeting Mumbai for our promotions as this was the site of the true story. We are expecting a good reaction from people who are acquainted with this episode in Mumbai’s history," he added.
 
Speaking about the marketing campaign around the film, Bedi informs that it has been concentrated on the quality of the film and the controversy. "The actual Stoneman case was never solved and we are outlining why this was so in the movie. No one actually knows what happened and how this guy, who killed nine people, disappeared, so we’re playing on this in the Mumbai market," he says.
 
Emphasis is also being laid on the date of release – Friday the 13th since it was a conscious decision to release the movie on this particular day. Bedi elaborates, "This is a thriller and hence it was apt to connect it with Friday the 13th, which is a universally known as the day of horror/fear etc. We are excited to get the audiences in on such a day and have them experience the entire gamut of this thriller story. We are promoting Friday the 13th release date in all our campaigns and the date has been emphasised across publicity material."
 
Kaleidoscope Entertainment has also rolled out a contest around the identity of the Stoneman.
 
The movie will not see a day and date release in the overseas but will hit the festival circuit first starting with the Berlin Film Festival, which is currently underway. "We are also targeting a number of distributors in Europe and America who deal with small high quality films like Rapid Eye in Germany, and not going down the standard international distribution route as non-star Indian movies is not their forte. We would rather release a little later in the overseas but with the right distribution for the right audience and hopefully a good profit," says Bedi.