Daredevil Mustafa’s Abhay: 'Family Drama failed theatrically, but its shelf life is not over'

When the teaser of the Kannada film Family Drama came, its quirky content had netizens take note. The first trailer had 78k views, while the release trailer had 1.2 million. Yet, when the film by debutant director Akarsh HP came out, despite largely positive reviews from critics about the fun ride that was presented, audiences did not respond to it and the film became a theatrical failure, ending its run within a few days.

Actor Abhay, of Daredevil Mustafa fame, who played one of the lead roles and worked on the film as an executive producer as well, spoke to Kannada Filmy Club recently to dissect what went wrong with Family Drama. “Family Drama failed theatrically, but I believe its shelf life is not over. In fact, it’s just beginning, as the film will be on OTT shortly,” he says. The film will be on Amazon Prime Video shortly.

Daredevil Mustafa’s Abhay says Family Drama’s fun lies in the foolishness of the characters 

Abhay on the problems with Family Drama's theatrical release

According to Abhay, he’s looked at it from different perspectives, right from the problems in the making of the film, its release, marketing, the issues the team faced, and the audience. “When Akarsh and I began developing the story of Family Drama, the idea was to bring in the central conflict point around the 35-minute mark. While it seemed exciting, it felt a tad forced and hence, we decided to explore the characters and their world a bit more. By the time, we got around to making the film, that happened only after an hour, which, in retrospect, could have meant that the audience got bored waiting for it,” he says, adding that the editing should have also been a crisp.

As far as the release of Family Drama goes, Abhay says that it was a tedious process. “It begins with the pricing of the ticket. In a week in which Dhanush’s Raayan and Raj B Shetty’s Roopanthara are also in theatres, and all three are then priced at Rs 220 per ticket, who will audiences prefer to watch at that price point? Obviously Dhanush or Raj,” he says.

Abhay says that he had proposed a reduction in ticket prices, as well as a limited release in certain centers only, but the ‘ecosystem’ that decides a theatrical release, did not approve. Pricing, accessibility, and timing of shows, together became a major issue for the film, he says.

Family Drama movie review: Akarsh HP and Abhay deliver on their promise of a quirky comedy with aplomb 

As far as Kannada audiences are concerned, Abhay’s personal experience is that when there is positive word-of-mouth for a film, its business picks up only by the second week. “If word is that a film is superb, it will grow organically, but if the feedback is not as encouraging, audiences will do a wait and watch game, by which time the theatrical run ends and it then heads to OTT, if there’s a deal,” he says.