Forget sequels, why not character spin-offs?

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: While making a sequel is the norm, I wonder whether Bollywood will ever bite into the idea of creating a spin-off feature around any of the important non-lead characters from a franchise.

On television, Matt Le Blanc reprised his role as Joey Tribbiani from Friends in a sitcom called Joey. Imagine if the producers of Sex & The City were bold enough to create a dedicated piece around Samantha.

In Bollywood, how viable or exciting would it be to create a film around Circuit (from Munnabhai), Baburao Ganpatrao Apte from Hera Pheri or Sunehri from Dhoom 2?

As Spider-Man ages, Sony is planning a spin-off on Venom, the bad guy in Spider-Man 3.

You may recall that Venom was the parasite that attached itself to a host via a sticky substance giving the host special powers. I suppose Sony’s inspiration to base a spin-off on a villain presumably stems from the attention and dollars drawn by Heath Ledger’s villainous Joker in The Dark Knight.

Sony is developing a fourth Spider-Man film for 2011 anyway so in the meantime, it would be nice for Venom’s fans to see him in some more ruthless carnage. And for Bollywood to give this a shot too!

Locarno kicks off

The 61st Locarno Film Festival kicks off tomorrow. Julian Jarrold’s Evelyn Waugh adaptation Brideshead Revisited is the festival’s opening film.

While Locarno is undoubtedly one of Europe’s blue-chip film festivals, its ability to attract buyers is not as much as that of Cannes, or even Berlin for that matter. For me, the presence of a market to do business is important, which explains why I’m not such a Locarno regular.

That said there are some pedigreed buyers and sellers from Switzerland, Italian, France and Germany that attend Locarno, which is indicative of the festival’s European bent. If your film is hot and much talked about here, it will sell; slightly different from the case at Cannes or Berlin where sellers get lucky by occasionally disposing even the lesser product from their catalogue.

Interestingly, this year the decision by the Edinburgh International Film Festival to move earlier into the summer will attract more media, sellers and buyers from the UK to Locarno as well.

Mummy dethrones the Knight

Universal’s The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor grossed close to $15.3 million on its opening day, more than the estimated $12.6 million earned by Warner’s The Dark Knight.

However, the Batman sequel continues to remain a formidable opponent, as it declined just 46% in its third Friday for a cumulative gross of $363.7 million.