Best-seller, on screen and in print

Pratim D. Gupta

Number 23 in the US. Number eight in the UK. Number one in Calcutta.
Ever since its premiere at the 650-year-old Pathe Tsuchinski theatre in Amsterdam, Vidhu Vinod Chopra’s adaptation of the Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay classic, Parineeta, has topped the box-office charts in the country and broken new grounds on foreign turf.
And now, the Pradeep Sarkar directorial debut, which breathes Calcutta in every frame, is not only being touted as the biggest screen hit of the year, it has even given the Sarat Chandra novel a fresh lease of life in print.
Penguin Books India has come up with an English translation of Parineeta — along the lines of Devdas and Chokher Bali, but this time with “the first formal tie-in” with a film production company. So, Vinod Chopra Films has been credited for the film poster on the cover with Vidya Balan as Lolita, Saif Ali Khan as Shekhar and Sanjay Dutt as Girish/Girin.
Says V.K. Karthika, executive editor of Penguin Books India: “We were planning this from the time we heard of the film being made. We are looking at both people who would pick up the book after watching the film and those who would just read it without bothering to visit the theatres.”
For the Parineeta producers, the tie-in helps the film grow among the audiences. Says Sam Fernandes, chief operating officer of Vinod Chopra Films: “The novel is a very old one. So, people may like to read the book and know the characters before going for the film. They would also know the little bit of changes we have made to the storyline.”
A couple of thousand copies of the book have already flown from the shelves and Penguin expects re-orders for the Rs-99 book to take the tally up to the 10,000 mark.
A bestseller on bookshelves it might be, but a blockbuster at the box-office it already is. Says Arijit Dutta, eastern region distributor for the film: “It has had a phenomenal first two weeks. At Priya, the collections have been much more than the Black figures over the same period. Parineeta should easily complete 50 days here.”
At 89 Cinemas and INOX (Forum and City Centre), average collections in the opening fortnight have ranged from 85 to 95 per cent.
The two new releases last Friday — the all-skin Mallika Sherawat-Rekha-starrer Bachke Rehna Re Baba and the all-soul Silsiilay by Khalid Mohamed — have flopped. Even the much-hyped Bunty Aur Babli from the Yash Chopra house has slowed down in the two weeks that Parineeta has entered the race, prompting Vinod Chopra to chuckle: “We Chopras come from the same village in Punjab but believe in different schools of film-making.”