A little over two weeks after his much awaited film 83 released theatrically, filmmaker Kabir Khan describes his headspace as a “mixed bag”.
While he is happy that the cricket drama has received unprecedented love, the feeling is also punctured with the reality that the project’s box office prospects took a hit due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Led by Ranveer Singh, the film chronicles India’s win under Kapil Dev’s captainship, when the team defeated the mighty West Indies in the final to clinch their first-ever World Cup trophy in 1983.
83 was expected to script history at the box office upon its release — in Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Malayalam — on December 24 but the big-scale multi-starrer failed to translate the glowing reviews into numbers the trade was betting the film to do.
The film has so far collected more than Rs 97 crore domestically, according to production house Reliance Entertainment.
In an interview with PTI, Kabir Khan called the film “a victim of the pandemic” and said 83 has put up the numbers despite battling Covid-19 restrictions, 50 per cent theatrical occupancy in key states and the complete closure of cinema halls in Delhi and Haryana.
“But with this pandemic, despite our best planning, one can never get it right. We did not know that the explosion (of cases) would literally take place on the day of our release. December 24 is when we (the country) hit 6,000 cases and in 10 days we crossed a lakh. It was just sad,” Khan said.
The director said 48 hours prior to the release, the team got an indication that things could go “spiralling out of control”, but it was too late for them to react, so they went ahead keeping their “fingers crossed”.
A day after the film opened, Gujarat, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh announced a night curfew, which Kabir Khan said impacted the night shows of the film. Within four days, Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal announced the closure of cinema halls.
States like Kerala, Rajasthan, West Bengal, Punjab, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Uttar Pradesh followed suit and capped the theatrical occupancy at 50 per cent.
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The director said 48 hours prior to the release, the team got an indication that things could go “spiralling out of control”, but it was too late for them to react, so they went ahead keeping their “fingers crossed”.
While 83 has underperformed at the box office, the trade has hailed Allu Arjun-starrer Pushpa: The Rise as a bona fide blockbuster, with its Hindi version clocking more than Rs 74 crore at the box office.
The multilingual thriller opened a week before 83 and clashed with the Hollywood superhero film Spider-Man: No Way Home.
Kabir Khan said unlike Pushpa — which had collected Rs 26 crore from its Hindi version in the first week, when everything was functional — 83 didn’t even have the chance to enjoy a restriction-free run.
“Everyone now knows that December 26 is when it all came crashing down, when we realised we are in the middle of a third wave. What is the amount of money they (Pushpa) made before that and what is the amount of money they made after that? Of course, they kept continuing but at levels much lower than us.
“Where did we even have the chance to fight that? To constantly say that, ‘Oh but that one made money…’ Yes, but look at the relative ratios. If it did Rs 26 crore in the first week, they added another Rs 50 and we did another 100. The thing is when you report numbers and do not choose to mention the pandemic at all, does that not sound completely weird? It was an erroneous reporting which is unforgivable. It smells of agenda and bad professionalism.”
