Pandal ad platform for Sandip Ray film

KOLKATA:You might have bumped into Rani Mukherjee promoting her new film Dil BoleHadippa at South City Mall when you went there shopping last Saturday. Now, ifyou want to catch bits and pieces of the plot of director Sandip Ray's upcomingrelease Hitlist from the director himself, all you need to do is visit some pujapandals.With lakhs of people making a beeline for some of the topcrowd-pulling pandals, Sandip Ray's November release is planning to piggyridethe high footfall by launching an innovative publicity campaign at some citypandals and several ones in Salt Lake.Industry insiders andpublicity pundits say this is an altogether new way of reaching out to people."People are in the best of spirits, eating and pandal-hopping without muchhurry. This is the best time to catch them and draw them to a movie," said apublicity whiz, adding that many others will follow.Vision3 Global,the production and distribution house behind the film, is planning to go bigwith the plan this Puja, as the movie will hit the halls and multiplexes inNovember. Mou Roychowdhury, director of V3G, said: "We have spoken to theorganisers at Santosh Mitra Square, Mohammed Ali Park and some others in SaltLake, considering a huge number of people visit these places every year. We havealso decided to put up advertisement stands in puja pandals. This is a great wayto reach out to so many people," Roychowdhury said.The film apsychological thriller casts Koel Mullick, Tota Roychowdhury, SudiptaChakraborty, Tinu Anand, Shaheb Chatterjee, Babul Supriyo, Dhritiman Chatterjeeand Dipankar De, with outdoor shooting already having been completed inMalaysia. "Now, post-production work on the film is on in Chennai, and SandipRay is busy there. I have just spoken to him and he will be back in town onSaptami, after which we will discuss the film's promotion plans in pandalsbetween Ashtami and Dashami," Roychowdhury added.Koel might not beable to make it, as she is busy in the puja of her house, "but we are stilltrying to ensure that she can be present," Roychowdhury said. Once Ray is back,the idea is to hold a programme on the stage where the director can himself tella bit of the storyline and "create a bit of suspense. We are also ensuring thepresence of some of the cast."Pradip Ghosh, president of the SantoshMitra Square puja committee, said the producers of the film had approached hisclub sometime back. "We have a special stage where we invite special guestsevery year. The programme for promoting Sandip Ray's film would be held on thatstage. It will also be a special occasion for us, because we have never donesomething like this before. With time, new concepts evolve to draw people andthis exercise would help the film as well as our Puja," said Ghosh.