Usually, a Hollywood film that opens two weeks after the US, during the IPL, on roughly 300 screens looks like a quiet release. For Obsession, that timing was the strategy. Warner Bros. Discovery’s Denzil Dias explained the plan at a FICCI Frames session in Mumbai, on a panel with Ayushmann Khurrana and Sriram Raghavan titled “Cinema at Crossroads – The Rules of the Big Screen”.
Why the India release was deliberately late
Dias said the Warner Bros. Discovery team saw the film in February and believed it could connect in India, but expected it to struggle on its own. So the distribution team made what Dias called “a very deliberate decision not to release it simultaneously with the US”.
The film was held back by two weeks and opened during the IPL. That looked counterintuitive, Dias explained, but the window had no other major film in cinemas. The lack of competition created room for a smaller title to be noticed.
The team also avoided selling the film upfront. The director and cast were largely unknown to Indian audiences, and Dias said conventional promotional assets were unlikely to generate engagement before the film’s reputation had built elsewhere.
Letting buzz travel, then converting it
Instead of spending early on local promotion, Dias waited for international buzz to build and let that conversation travel organically to India. The India release opened with around 300-odd screens in week one.
After opening, the team’s focus shifted to word of mouth. Dias said the goal was to amplify audience response rather than push pre-packaged marketing. The payoff was a long, compounding run: Obsession eventually did around 12 times its opening weekend at the Indian box office.
A 12x multiple is what distributors call long legs. It signals that demand was not exhausted in the first frame; audiences kept discovering the film over successive weeks.
The sequence behind the screens
Dias outlined a three-stage framework for theatrical releases:
- Find the audience: identify who the film is for before setting a release date.
- Meet them where they are: use assets and communication the audience can actually connect with.
- Manage supply after demand: once interest builds, place the film on the right screens, in the right markets, at the right showtimes.
He said the Warner Bros. and Universal marketing teams can then concentrate on availability once the demand side is working. That makes distribution part of the campaign, not a back-end function.
What the Obsession playbook changes
The case challenges the default that a Hollywood title should release day-and-date in India. For a low-awareness film, a short, deliberate delay can create scarcity and let global conversation do early marketing work. The trade-off is exposure to piracy between the US and India dates, and spoilers crossing borders. Dias’s account suggests the smaller opening was the stronger choice for this title.
He put the principle simply: “It’s not just about the story. How you deliver that story, how you market the film and how you nurture the audience are equally important.”
Source: bollywoodHungama.com
