Fans of the “Na Maloom Afraad” franchise, “Actor in Law”, and “Load Wedding” may be disappointed to find out that director Nabeel Qureshi and producer Fizza Ali Meerza will not be coming out with a film in 2019.
Fizza Ali Meerza spoke about her next film in an exclusive conversaation with PakistaniCinema.net. The “Actor In Law” producer said that she was “completely crushed after Load Wedding”, pointing to the film’s lukewarm performance due to the unequal share of screens it was given at the time of release. Load Wedding, starring Fahad Mustafa, Mehwish Hayat, Samina Ahmed, and Faiza Hassan, was released alongside JPNA2 and “Parwaz Hai Junoon” on Eidul Azha 2018. Film was given an unequal number of shows when compared to the other two films. As a result, the film failed to attain the status of box office hit.
This was an unexpected move by film exhibitors since “Actor in Law” and the two “Na Maloom Afraad” films had been commercial successes and brought massive footfalls to theatres. Fizza Ali Meerza said that after the treatment of Load Wedding at the hands of exhibitors, it took her a long time to recover.
“If the exhibitors had treated our film fairly, or if our distributer had pushed the release date because of excessive competition, “Load Wedding” could not have suffered that way and we would have already shot our next film by now.”
What’s Next?
Despite the setback of Load Wedding, Fizza and her team are working on a new script. The film will likely commence shooting in November due to the difficulty of shooting in the summer (as stated by Fizza), and hence, will be ready for release in 2020.
Fizza Ali Meerza and Nabeel Qureshi have always made films that are message oriented or poke fun at the absurdities of life in Pakistan. Their brand of cinema is a rare breed in today’s Pakistani cinema, which regularly puts out films that either center on pure entertainment without any deeper focus, or those that are self serious and action oriented without much entertainment value. We hope that Fizza and Nabeel continue making films that probe deep into the social strata of the country and make us chuckle along the way.
