There’s no denying that “83” is and well-made film, the praises, the accolades, and Ranveer Singh’s undeniably brilliant performance as Kapil Dev in the film, it’s said to be one of the most critically acclaimed movies of 2022 yet unfortunately the sports film has underperformed at the box office so far.
Many factors have contributed to the film’s underperformance, the ongoing covid situation, the fact that the film wasn’t much appealing to the masses, or the lack of entertainment quotient. Many critics blame that the film seemed to be more like a Docudrama than a larger-than-life film that most youth these days are attracted to. The film was most appealing to the big city audiences as against the mass population, who didn’t seem to accept the film with open hands.
Producer Ajay Rai still believes that the low box office collection cannot undermine the films brilliance, “Whatever its box office performance—and let’s not forget ’83’ was released when the third wave of the pandemic was around the corner—the film is as brilliant as ‘Lagaan’, the other cricket masterpiece. A film’s quality cannot be judged against its box office performance. Even today we talk about Guru Dutt’s ‘Kagaz Ke Phool’ and Raj Kapoor’s ‘Mera Naam Joker’ which were declared flops when released” he said.
Unfortunately, “83” couldn’t take off like “Pushpa” and “Spider-Man: No way home” did. These two movies had been released almost a week before 83 and still posed stiff competition to the film. Mass audiences preferred watching these two films as against “83” as it is said that the millennial population, which constitutes the majority of the box office tickets, couldn’t connect or relate to the film.
One of the producers of the film commented how it’s futile now to play the blame game and simply accept the fate of the film,
“Why blame the Covid resurgence? Even with the threat of the third wave, audiences flocked to see Spiderman and the Telugu film ‘Pushpa’. No. If they wanted to see “83” they would have come. But they didn’t. And the main reason for this is the youngsters couldn’t connect with the euphoria of the 1983 World Cup victory. For people who were witnesses to the victory, the film was like a documentary. They knew everything that they saw in the film from before. So we lost audiences both ways.”
On the sidelines, the movie is said to be available on the OTT platform soon, after 8 weeks of its theatrical release.
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