Director Kabir Khan breaks silence on box office collection of Ranveer Singh starrer ’83’

Ranveer Singh starrer sports drama ’83’, helmed by noted director Kabir Khan, has been receiving immense love and positive reviews from all quarters. While the audience and the critics has fallen in love with Kabir Khan’s rendition of the historic moment when India lifted the World Cup in 1983 and the on-point portrayal of the story of the underdogs emerging triumphant, the box office collection has been lukewarm. 

As reported by trade pandits, the film hasn’t done phenomenally well viz-a-viz box office collections. And now, speaking about the same, director Kabir Khan, in an exclusive chat with india.com explained how the box office performance of ’83’ doesn’t matter considering the unprecedented times we are living in. 

He said, “We all know what is happening at the Box Office. I feel at this point, to even talk about Box Office, is a little petty. We are living in a pandemic. We didn’t plan it in such a way that the moment we’ll release, we’ll have two states going into a night curfew; on the second day, we’ll have six states going into a night curfew, then on the fourth day, Delhi, which is a large part of the Box Office, will announce a theatre shutdown. In the middle of things like this, I can’t complain about Box Office. If I do, it wouldn’t be in the spirit of 83.”

Recently, while speaking to DNA in an exclusive interview, Kabir Khan had spoken about the challenges of putting together an ensemble cast for the film. He had said, “It was tough simply because I’m not just putting together any cricket team. Doing a fictional story on any cricket team would have been easy. But I’m representing these icons. It was a difficult process because cricketing skills I still know and the kins of hard work Ballu sir (Balwinder Sandhu) has put in, in training the boys, I knew sir will be able to crack it and he has that veto power.” 

He also mentioned that there were two stages in the audition process – the actors first had to prove their cricketing skills on the pitch and then their performance behind the camera was tested. He adds, “We had two stages of an audition. Ek cricket pitch thi casting director ke office ke bahar. First, they had to show their skills in cricket and that was recorded. Balwinder sir would say if they had the raw material or not and then they would go in. We broke the hearts of several boys in the process. So, to get boys who could play at that level and then get their persona right. I’ve always said it’s more about getting the persona right. It’s not a lookalike contest that we are doing, we are doing a film. It’s about that energy that a Sunil Gavaskar exudes, Srikkanth sir exudes.”

Talking about Ranveer Singh’s portrayal of Kapil Dev in the film, Kabir said, “Today everyone is talking about Ranveer Singh looking like Kapil Dev but I still say as a director it’s not the looks it’s the expression, the accent that is making all the difference. If you dissect feature by feature they are not similar. It’s the persona. When he walks and talks, it seems like Kapil Dev on-screen. It was a tough but enjoyable process.”