Tom Hanks’ Inferno will arrive 2 weeks before US, but where is Irrfan?

Tom Hanks’ Inferno, the third adaptation of Dan Brown’s Robert Langdon series will arrive in India a full two weeks before its US debut. But the question remains: Why aren’t they then pushing Irrfan’s role in the film more aggressively?

Director Ron Howard’s movie has been scheduled for an October 14 release in India, two weeks ahead of its US debut on October 28. This is not an unprecedented move; Disney released The Jungle Book in India a week before it came out in the US.

The Indian market has been growing at a rapid rate and Hollywood studios aren’t ignorant of this change, making the most of this trend by releasing films here (especially those with some local connect) before the rest of the world gets to see them. This paid off immensely for Disney when The Jungle Book became the highest-grossing Hollywood movie of all time in India, with a final gross of close to Rs 200 crore.

Both Priyanka Chopra and Deepika Padukone will make their Hollywood debuts in 2017 in tentpole films, further signalling the importance of the expanding Indian market.

Read: Inferno trailer: Well, at least they gave Irrfan Khan a millisecond

The involvement of Irrfan, one of India’s most prominent foreign export, makes Inferno a highly-anticipated Hollywood release. Sony Pictures would be looking to get the same traction with this film that Universal did with Jurassic World, a film Irrfan had a much meatier role in. But the marketing so far has all but ignored Irrfan. Not much is known about his character, and the most we’ve seen of him is a couple of promotional stills and a few frames in the trailer, which itself was a let-down.

Read: 2015, the year Hollywood challenged Bollywood at the box office

So here’s where that leaves us: Will the early release impact Inferno’s chances in the Indian market? All of Irrfan’s Hollywood films have done exceptionally well in India - Jurassic World made Rs 152 crore, The Amazing Spider-Man did Rs 90 crore and Life of Pi made Rs 88 crore. It’s likely, with the popularity of Tom Hanks and Dan Brown, that Inferno does well too. But where is Irrfan?

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