ABSTRACT
In February 2020, the coronavirus was an easy-to-miss ticker scrolling on news channels in India, informing the reader of a little-understood health crisis in distant lands. Like with most other economic activity, content production came to a grinding halt, and several eagerly awaited, big-budget feature films indefinitely postponed their previously scheduled theatrical release dates. Production houses, film stars and others involved in the content business opened their wallets to ensure that daily wage earners were able to sustain themselves even as the sets that they worked on remained deserted. Theatrical releases – announced with much enthusiasm and in great numbers when cinema halls were finally allowed to operate at full capacity from February 2021 – were once again in firefighting mode, with night curfews from 8:00 pm to 7:00 am enforced in Mumbai, the most lucrative film market, as well as many other cities.
