With this pandemic, despite our best planning, one can never get it right: Kabir Khan on '83'

Around two weeks after Kabir Khan's much-awaited film '83' released theatrically, filmmaker Kabir Khan describes his headspace as a "mixed bag".

While Kabir is happy that the cricket drama has received unprecedented love, the feeling is also punctured with the reality that the films box office prospects took a hit due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Ranveer Singh starrer 83, 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.

While the film 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 get 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 the production house.

In an interview with PTI, Kabir called the film "a victim of the pandemic" and said '83' has put up the numbers despite battling COVID-19 restrictions, 50 percent theatrical occupancy in key states, and the complete closure of cinema halls in Delhi and Haryana.

He said,

"I feel exhilarated to have created this film which has received so much love but at the same time, there is a disappointment that not everybody who wants to watch it can see it today because the pandemic is there with historic numbers. We nurtured the film for two years, waited for the correct time so that everybody gets to see it on the big screen. 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."

The director said 48 hours prior to the release, the team got an indication that things could go "spiraling 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 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.