Hanuman Ansh missed the Oscar entry deadline, its producer says
Namrata Singh says the team did not know about the 7 September cut-off for India’s official Best International Feature submission. A Telugu version arrives on 18 September.
Hanuman Ansh will not be considered as India's official entry for the Oscar for Best International Feature Film, because its producers missed the submission deadline of 7 September.
Producer Namrata Singh of SacredIP Trans Media Tech told Bollywood Hungama that the team simply did not know the date, and was occupied with the film's overseas release and its Telugu dub.
What the producer said
Singh's account was unusually direct about the reason.
"We missed the Oscar submission deadline yesterday (September 7), as it was the last day," she said. "We got calls from a thousand people ki aap ne film submit nahin ki. But we didn't know about it."
She attributed it to capacity rather than to a decision. "We are busy with too many things. Also, we are a really small team," she said.
"The artists and director are on tour. There's hardly anyone in the office," she added.
The film that outgrew its office
The gap between the scale of the film's run and the size of the team behind it is the substance of this story.
Singh is a first-time producer. Vishal Chaturvedi is a first-time writer-director. The film has become one of the year's outlying commercial performers, and the organisation handling it has not grown at the same rate.
"When you release overseas, there are multiple things to take care of," Singh said. "Moreover, I am a first-time producer while Vishal Chaturvedi is a first-time writer-director."
She described the international release as an education conducted in real time: "Hence, we are all learning on the go how to release the film internationally," she said. "The amount of censor processes to be done and assets to be created was overwhelming."
Why 11 September mattered
The overseas release was fixed to a date the team treated as non-negotiable for reasons that had nothing to do with box office.
"We are also devotees and it's very important for us to release overseas on September 11 because it is Mahasamadhi day for Maharaj ji," Singh said. "That's the day Maharaj ji left his body in 1973."
The producers announced the Telugu release date on the same day, which Bollywood Hungama gives as the Mahasamadhi Day of Neeb Karori Baba. Singh said meeting the deadline consumed the team: the race against time to release on 11 September, she said, took everything they had. The release went ahead that Friday.
The Oscar deadline fell on 7 September — four days before it.
The Telugu version
The film is being dubbed into Telugu, with Trivikram Srinivas on board for that version. "Trivikram Srinivas (of Ala Vaikunthapurramuloo fame) is on board for the Telugu version," Singh said.
The makers announced on 11 September, the same Mahasamadhi day, that the Telugu release arrives in cinemas on 18 September.
Asked whether Tamil, Malayalam and Kannada versions would follow, Singh said not for now. "No. We have only dubbed it in Telugu. I am just not getting the time," she said, laughing.
She said the order of work was set: Telugu first, then the remaining languages. The team is also working on accessibility so that people of different abilities can watch the film.
What else is being built around it
Singh said the film is being extended beyond cinema in two directions. A game is in development, made by the company behind FAU-G. A comic book is also planned, and the producers are in discussions with one of the largest comic publishers in India.
Both are extensions beyond the film itself, and indicate how the producers are now treating the property.
What was actually lost
Being India's official entry requires a film to be submitted for consideration by the closing date, which this year fell on 7 September. Missing that step removes a film from the running entirely, regardless of its merits or its performance.
It does not affect the film's commercial run, its language versions or its overseas release — all of which are proceeding.
Singh described the miss plainly rather than explaining it away, which is the detail that gives the account its weight.
