Calcutta, July 28: It’s one first day, first show that Mumbai is not queuing up to catch. It’s one flood-hit Friday that promises to break rather than make the new releases.

Yet, Shoojit Sircar’s Yahaan and Kabeer Kaushik’s Sehar have decided to throw caution to the western winds and plunge ahead with the July 29 release date. What could await them is a complete first-weekend washout.

First the prints have to reach the distributors and then the theatres. While the prints of Yahaan, despatched from Hyderabad, had reached every city except Mumbai till this evening, the prints of Sehar, featuring Mahima Chaudhuri (in Picture), from Mumbai had not reached many cities, including Calcutta.

“The two producers just do not have any business sense,” says trade analyst Taran Adarsh. “Here in Mumbai, it’s a question of survival, with people stepping out just to buy bread and milk and stock their refrigerators before the next round of showers. Who would go and watch a movie when they have no food, no electricity, no phone connection and have cars to tow on the roads?

“And if Mumbaikers don’t go to the theatres, the films will suffer badly.”

Sircar, Yahaan’s debutant director, is keeping fingers crossed. “It’s absolute chaos here with the prints. We are expecting them to come in late tonight or tomorrow morning. The Friday collections are definitely going to be affected but we hope that by Sunday things will settle down and people will flock to the theatres again.”

The Sehar prints were sent to Delhi this evening since the first domestic flight path to become operational was Mumbai-Delhi.

Says Pritam Jalan of Jalan Distributors, Calcutta distributor of Sehar: “We are expecting the prints to reach here by tomorrow morning, well in time for the 12 noon shows.”

That means its morning multiplex shows ? 10 am at INOX (City Centre) and 10.30 am at INOX (Forum) must be called off. “We have kept that option open and since the next shows are in the evening or at night, we won’t have problems,” is the word from INOX.

The premieres of the two films have already been affected. The Yahaan premiere, slated for tonight, had to be called off since the passes for the show couldn’t reach the invitees on time. And hardly anyone could make it to the Sehar premiere this evening.

Matching big-screen blues, frame by frame, are small-screen shockers. This evening, loyal followers of Kkavyanjali, Kahiin To Hoga and Kahaani Ghar Ghar Ki had to sit through repeat shows as “no software was ready for telecast”.