Shakti Samanta’s son, Ashim Samanta, has made his mark as a film and television director and producer. But not many are aware that he is the ‘dubbing king’ of India. He was the one who worked on the dubbing of Jurassic Park (1994), the first ever Hollywood flick to be dubbed in India. Ever since, he has been regularly dubbing for major Hollywood studios and also for OTT giants. In an exclusive interview with Bollywood Hungama, Ashim Samanta spoke candidly about his dubbing journey and revealed the extreme measures Hollywood studios take to keep their films leak-proof.
When asked how many days in advance Ashim Samanta and his team view a Hollywood film for dubbing, he replied, “We see it at least three months in advance. So, we are among the first ones in the world to see the movie. However, we get the prints with watermarks. At times, there’s a blackout; we can only see the faces of the characters. There are times when we have dubbed only with the soundtrack! Nothing is challenging anymore for us; we can handle anything (laughs).”
Ashim then shared a fascinating trivia, “During Oppenheimer (2023), they did not provide the opening print at all. We dubbed the entire film with only telescopic, zoomed-in shots of the faces. We were only given access to those scenes where they had dialogues. If the dialogues were in the background, the visuals were not provided. After the mixing was over, we got a chance to see the dubbed version online, that too reel-wise. After showing each reel, they asked us if they wanted us to redub any portion. After the film was over, we informed them that we needed to re-dub hardly 10-12 lines. They were happy with the fact that we could manage to dub the whole film without actually seeing it!”
Ashim Samanta admitted that such precautions were taken because it was a high-profile flick and the makers were clear that nothing should get leaked before the film. Ashim continued, “What a mind-blowing film Oppenheimer was. In India, it did a business of Rs. 125 crores, out of which Rs. 60-70 crores came from dubbed versions. During the dubbing process, I had not even seen it properly and yet, I was confident about its box office prospects.”
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