Clash! Shraddha's Haseena Parkar and Sanjay Dutt's Bhoomi to release on Sept 22

Mumbai: While story or cast used to hold maximum importance for a film earlier, the way the industry functions nowadays prove it's hardly the norm anymore.

Along with promotions and marketing, the release date also has started playing a crucial part in the entire packaging of the film.

With only 52 Fridays in a year, and handful of festivals or public holidays, makers try to schedule the releases around that time to gain maximum footfalls for the films.

The trend of announcing the release dates well in advance also tends to put unnecessary pressure on the team, often leading to a poor product.

Not being able to live up to the deadline also causes delays, one such film being the Shraddha Kapoor starrer ‘Haseeena Parkar’, based on the story of gangster Dawood Ibrahim’s sister.

The film was earlier scheduled to hit the screens in 14 July but got pushed to 18 August later on.

The team could not hold on to that date either and had announced their decision to indefinitely postpone the release.

The makers have now zeroed in on September 22 as the release date and we genuinely hope this is the final release date.

However, the film will now release with Sanjay Dutt’s comeback film ‘Bhoomi’, directed by Omung Kumar.

22 September is also not the first release date for ‘Bhoomi’ either, as the revenge drama was earlier set to release on August 4.

At the time, Aamir Khan’s Secret Superstar’ was also releasing on the same day and Sanjay didn’t want to clash with his friend.

Eventually, while ‘Bhoomi’ got pushed to September 22, ‘Secret Superstar’ is now releasing during Diwali.

It would now be interesting to see how the films plan the promotional strategy considering the clash, or one of them would consider changing the release date again.