This was a rather disappointing weekend for the most anticipated film of Kabir Khan, 83 with Ranveer Singh as its lead character. Despite the big national holiday of Christmas, wherein Bollywood films such as Tiger Zinda Hai and Dangal create All-time single day records in collections over their opening weekends, the figures for 83 are substantially lower. Out of the Rs. 46 crore made over its first three days at the box office – which includes around Rs. 28 crores coming from sales through just three major chain cinemas – only individual theatres and those outside India contributed any significant sums to this figure with all other movie theaters not showing up to support it financially at all over these last few days.
It isn’t as if audiences won’t step out to see movies on the big screen, like Spider Man: No Way Home and Pushpa which continued collecting money in their second weekend. These two films weren’t affected by the decreased number of showings, just as much as this so called fear of Omicron. The audience was more than happy to still see these on the big screens rather than home when they had a chance; especially because they were treated to something they wouldn’t get at home – 3D effects!
The fact that 83 may not have been what many people had hoped was indisputable. The high price of tickets being just one of the factors involved in making it hard for the average person to see this movie, let alone telling their friends about it. Another factor was that there wasn’t much advertising put towards these projects – people only heard about them through word of mouth or social media. It may sound obvious but when most movies release into theatres they tend to have been marketed before hand and people know what they are going to see months before it comes out.
Not all is lost though, there were some exceptionally promising signs among those who saw 83 during its previews days ago such as Dharam Raja who said I am glad we got off work early on Friday because I don’t think we would want anything else today, marking a thumbs up emoji followed by five heart emojis against this message written for his followers.
