Rohit Shetty Recalls When People Discouraged Him From Releasing ‘Sooryavanshi’ In Theatres: “He Has Gone Mad, Nobody Is Going To Come To Theatres”
The cop drama recently grossed around 150 crores at the box office and still counting. Audiences are still thronging towards the cinema halls to experience the magic of the big screen again.
Sooryavanshi Director Rohit Shetty Was Told That No One Will Step Into Cinema Halls To Watch His Cop Drama ( Photo Credit – Instagram ; Sooryavanshi Poster )
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Rohit Shetty is basking in love from everywhere as the majority of the people is applauding his latest release Sooryavanshi, headlined by Akshay Kumar. However, in a recent interview, the filmmaker revealed that many even told him that no one will step into the theatre to watch his film and shared halting the release of the film was not easy.
The cop drama recently grossed around 150 crores at the box office and still counting. Audiences are still thronging towards the cinema halls to experience the magic of the big screen again.
In an interview with PTI, Sooryavanshi director Rohit Shetty recalled that people told him he was making a bad decision, he shared, “We fought for almost 19 months, where everyone told me my decision was wrong. Even till Thursday a lot of people were like, ‘He has gone mad, nobody is going to come to theatres.’ But there was a belief that they would come. We analysed a lot of things – the Ganesh Utsav, Navratri, how schools and malls started opening up, and how people started going back to work.”
Rohit Shetty added, “When all of this was happening, I knew people would come to the theatres. Someone had to take the first step. I knew I had to take the risk and now I think it was worth taking. It was not just about me but the livelihood of all those connected to the theatrical business.”
While waiting for the release of Sooryavanshi, the filmmaker was approached by many streaming platforms for the direct OTT release. However, the Singham director remained adamant that he will release the Akshay Kumar starrer on the big screen.
Talking about the same, Rohit Shetty said, “People said, ‘Cinema halls are dead, there is no future of films theatrically’ but I wasn’t worried. There were offers from OTT for the film, there was a lot of discussion in my office that we should move on. But I didn’t want to, I wanted to wait. We would have been in huge, much more profit when it would have come 19 months or 15 months ago when we started getting the offers. But I had a firm belief that it was made for cinema (halls) and it should come there.”
The director was sure about one tag that will change after the release of ‘Sooryavanshi’, “I could not sleep the night before the release; I was awake till 12:30 in the afternoon. I had my sleepless nights because nobody knew what was going to happen. The one tag that will change after ‘Sooryavanshi’ is that commercial films are made for money.”
Apart from Akshay Kumar, the Rohit Shetty directorial features, Katrina Kaif and cameos of Ajay Devgn as Singham and Ranveer Singh as Simmba.
