Old is gold: Why Bollywood is turning to re-releases amid string of flops

As more and more contemporary films fail, producers and exhibitors fall back on time-tested fare and star power to lure viewers back to theatres.

New Delhi, India – When Raghav Bikhchandani found out on social media that Gangs of Wasseypur, the acclaimed Indian blockbuster released in 2012, was all set to hit the theatres in New Delhi again, he knew he could not miss it this time and even alerted several film clubs and WhatsApp groups he was part of.

For the 27-year-old copy editor, getting to watch the two-part film felt like “finally being introduced to the most memed movie in Indian pop culture” as he found himself commuting for three hours on an August afternoon to a seedy theatre in the city’s Subhash Nagar neighbourhood to catch the movie on the big screen.

“I came into Hindi cinema much later in life, and I had missed out on seeing this on the big screen. When I was studying abroad in Chicago, even NRIs in my university would quote dialogues from this movie but I had never gotten a chance to see it. So I knew I couldn’t miss this opportunity,” he told Al Jazeera.

Based in a mining town in eastern India on a decades-long feud between rival gangs mainly dealing in coal, “the black diamond”, the Anurag Kashyap-directed duology attained popularity and critical acclaim following its full-house premier at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival in France.

With an inventive cast, sharp dialogues, pitch-black comedy and gritty setting, the five-hour epic crime and political drama cemented its status as one of the most memorable Indian films of the past decade.

But it isn’t just Gangs of Wasseypur. Bollywood, India’s much-vaunted Hindi film industry based in Mumbai, as well as regional film studios spread across the world’s most