Vivek Agnihotri's The Vaccine War collected only Rs 85 lakh on its opening day last week. The director compared the sales of Bhagavad Gita and Playboy as he defended the low opening of his latest release.
Vivek Aginohotri's latest release The Vaccine War, based on Dr. Balram Bhargava's book Going Viral: Making of Covaxin, was released in the theatres last week on Thursday, September 28. Nana Patekar portrays Bhargava, who was the Director General at the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) during the Covid-19 pandemic.
The Vaccine War has taken a low opening at the box office with the first day collecions of only Rs 85 lakh. In the first four days, the film has only collected Rs 5.75 crore. Vivek's previous film The Kashmir Files also took a slow start at the box office with Rs 3.55 crore opening but had picked up pace from the second day itself and went on to mint Rs 295 crore net in India.
In a recent interview with Koimoi, when the filmmaker was asked if had expected such low numbers for The Vaccine War, he replied that he is not in the box office race and if he wanted to emulate the success of The Kashmir Files, he would have made The Kashmir Files 2. Vivek cited the example of the sales of Bhagavad Gita and Playboy in his explanation.
The National Award-winning filmmaker said, "Agar ek nayi bookshop mein, aap kahiye ki sirf aap do hi kitaabein bechenge. Aap rakh dijiye Playboy aur aap rakh dijiye Gita, toh aap khud dekh lijiye kaunsi zyaada chalti hai? Toh agar 1000 copies Playboy ki bikti hain toh sirf 10 copies Gita ki bikengi toh kya aap bolenge Gita flop hai? (If in a new bookshop, you decide to sell only two books. You keep Playboy and Bhagavad Gita, then you will see for yourself that which book sells more? If 1000 Playboy copies are sold and only 10 copies of Gita are sold, so will you say that Gita is a flop?)".
Apart from Nana Patekar, The Vaccine War also features Pallavi Joshi, Anupam Kher, Sapthami Gowda, Raima Sen, Girja Oak, Nivedita Bhattacharya, and Mohan Kapur in the lead roles. Produced by Pallavi Joshi and I Am Buddha Productions, the film is now screening in cinemas across the nation in Hindi, Tamil, and Telugu languagues.
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 "Vivek Agnihotri/File photo")
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