Srinagar, July 22: Director-writer Christopher Nolan’s epic Thriller ‘Oppenheimer witnessed a full house in Kashmir’s only multiplex.
This is the first time that a Hollywood movie is running houseful in Kashmir after the only multiplex was re-opened in September last year.
Vikas Dhar, who runs Kashmir’s lone cinema theatre in association with Inox, said Oppenheimer is doing very well.
“Shah Rukh Khan-starrer Pathaan had attracted a huge rush at our cinema. We are quite surprised that Hollywood movie is attracting movie goers in Kashmir in such a large number,” he said. .
“Yesterday and today we had a full house. Tomorrow we are expecting a big crowd,” he said, adding even before the release of the movie the tickets had sold out.
“It has been a learning for us that youth of Kashmir are preferring Hollywood movies also. It is quite a thrilling experience,” Dhar said.
The multiplex at Srinagar Shivpora was reopened last year after a gap of 33 years.
In 1989 when militancy erupted in Kashmir, a little known militant outfit “Allah Tigers” imposed a ban on the film screening in the Valley and all the 13 cinemas including nine in Srinagar stopped screening of films.
In 1999, the J&K government offered packages to the theater owners for re-opening of cinemas. Three of them – Broadway, Regal and Neelam (all in Srinagar) re-opened . All the three were later shut after a cine-goer was killed in a grenade attack.
The union territory government plans to establish cinemas in every district of the region and already several multipurpose cinema halls have been reopened in several districts of Kashmir.
Only last week, Jammu and Kashmir Lieutenant Governor Manoj Sinha inaugurated 100-seater multipurpose cinema halls in Baramulla and Handwara towns of north Kashmir.
