On Saturday we wrote about MrBeast turning up at the Ramayana event in Mumbai, and noted in passing that the event had started around 5pm against a scheduled 1:30pm. We called the three and a half hour delay “a small thing that tells you something about the operation”.
It turns out it was not a small thing. Several journalists walked out.
What Actually Happened
Per Bollywood Hungama, the start time moved four times in the space of about two hours on 25 September: 12:30pm, then 12pm, then 1pm, then a final 1:30pm.
The event began at roughly 5pm.
For the first hour and a half of the overrun, organisers offered no explanation at all. Only after 3pm were journalists told the reason: MrBeast’s flight from Bengaluru had been delayed.
When the event finally started, it ran about twenty minutes and contained no significant announcement.
Covered by Box Office Worldwide and carried widely.
The Line That Is Being Misreported
Ranbir Kapoor, told that journalists wanted to leave, said: “Aap logon ko jana hai toh chale jao.” If you people want to go, go.
That has travelled as a snub, and it is worth slowing down on, because the reporting itself does not support the reading.
A journalist present clarified to Bollywood Hungama that Kapoor was not being arrogant. He had arrived early. He had been waiting as long as they had. He was irritated by the same delay they were irritated by, and the remark was closer to exasperated solidarity than dismissal.
We are flagging that because the quote is going to outlive the context, and the context is the part that is actually true.
Per the same reporting, Ravie Dubey was the one who apologised. MrBeast’s own team is said to have not passed flight information to the Indian PR team.
Why This Is Worth More Than A Gossip Item
Indian film publicity runs on the unpaid labour of entertainment journalists, and the arrangement is rarely stated out loud.
A reporter is invited to an event. They travel across Mumbai, frequently at their own cost. They wait. They file. The coverage that results is worth a great deal of money to the production and generates comparatively little for the publication, because event coverage is low-value traffic.
The arrangement works because both sides observe an unwritten contract: the production gets free promotion, the reporter gets access and a usable story, and neither wastes the other’s day.
A four-time-revised call sheet, a three and a half hour overrun with no communication for the first ninety minutes, and twenty minutes of content with nothing in it is that contract being broken on one side only.
The walkout is not precious. It is a group of professionals correctly identifying that their time had been valued at zero and declining to keep donating it.
The Part That Should Worry The Production
We wrote on Saturday that putting MrBeast on a Mumbai stage was the smartest piece of Indian film marketing this year, and that assessment stands. Reaching an audience that no Indian film channel can otherwise touch is a real achievement.
But the entire value of that play depends on execution, and the execution failed on the most basic logistical point available: the guest’s flight.
A production spending at the scale Ramayana is spending, with a Diwali release roughly a month away, cannot have its flagship international-facing event turn into a story about journalists walking out. The coverage that came out of the day is now split between the viral clip and the walkout, and the second one is the one the Indian trade will remember.
There is also a small irony worth recording for a publication based here. The flight that held up the biggest Hindi film event of the month was coming from Bengaluru.
Bengaluru Baath Take
Apologise properly and pay for the taxis. That is the entire fix and it costs less than one poster.
Ravie Dubey said sorry, which is more than most do, but he was not the one who should have been saying it. An event that wastes four hours of forty people’s working day owes those people a statement from the top of the production, not a courtesy from the actor who happened to be nearest a microphone.
And to the outlets running Ranbir Kapoor’s line as a snub: the reporting says he was stuck there too. Print that part.
Sources
- Bollywood Hungama, revised call times, delay, explanation, Kapoor quote and clarification, Ravie Dubey apology
- Box Office Worldwide, walkout account and quote
- ThePrint, original event coverage and timings
