Enkayaar, Bollywood Trade News Network

William Shakespeare might have been mightily amused had he been alive with the initiatives being taken in the world of Hindi cinema to strive for novelty through names to elicit the curiosity of the audience. Latest to join the bandwagon is Pritish Nandy Communications and Aziz Mirza directed film ET THO CHANCE that seems to be merging the sensibilities of the hinterland along with the nuances of the modern cinema fans that may have an element of comfort with an English word in the name of the film. WAKE UP SID is another example of this kind and the title of this type seems to be guided by the fact that it is going to talk about a subject that would have few takers in the hinterland, but the cinema buffs in the urban more so in the metropolitan cities would like to identify in a big way. WANTED, the Salman Khan starrer also falls in the same category.

As a matter of fact this obsession with the names has been a fetish that dominates the industry for quite a long time and it progresses with the trend, when QAYAMAT SE QAYAMAT TAK had become a roaring hit a trend for long names became a raring motif. Now the flavor of the season is to have English names, but could this also be to do with the fact Hollywood films have suddenly started bombarding the Indian Box Office with much larger intensity therefore to counter it English names of the films are being adopted.

If one were to go into the antiquity of naming the films with English names, the toss could be Shammi Kapoor starrer CHINATOWN, Ashok Kumar starrer HOWRAH BRIDGE or Dev Anand starrer TAXI DRIVER. As a matter of fact the trend to name the films in English has come into vogue in a big way during the last few years. One wonders whether this trend has something to do with the fact that sensibility of the audience of the present times is more attuned to English nuances and hence the first name of initiation aka the name is in English. This trend was noticed after BEING CYRUS, which was able to make its mark at the box office in a big way. It was followed by score of films being named in English and even the first full-length animation film produced in Hindi with a voice over from established stars like Saif Khan was christened in English, ROADSIDE ROMEO.

But whether this new faith in naming the films in English would result in better returns from the box-office would be a result worth waiting for.