Koffee with Karan 7: Shahid Kapoor opens up about failure of Jersey, says he wanted the film to have a direct-to-digital release
On the latest episode of Koffee with Karan 7, Shahid Kapoor said that it was difficult to constantly create buzz around Jersey as it had been postponed twice already.
When actor Shahid Kapoor played the titular character of Kabir Singh in the Hindi remake of Telugu blockbuster Arjun Reddy, it gave him a much-needed solo hit. However, he could not replicate that film’s success with his most recent release Jersey, which was also the Hindi remake of Telugu film by the same name.
Jersey, which also starred Mrunal Thakur, was postponed twice before finally being released in theatres in April 2022. During the latest episode of filmmaker Karan Johar’s Koffee with Karan, Shahid revealed that after the second postponement, he wanted the film to be released directly on a streaming platform.
Shahid, who appeared on the latest season of the chat show with his Kabir Singh co-star Kiara Advani, said that the producer of the film Aman Gill and director Gowtam Tinnauri both wanted it to be a theatrical release.
Jersey was first slated for an August 2021 release, but got pushed to December 31 due to the pandemic. However, because of the Omicron wave, Delhi theatres were shut down in December, and the film’s release was postponed mere three days before.
Talking about the film, Shahid said, “Actually in December, when we were supposed to release it on the 31st and we couldn’t release, because Covid came in and Delhi got shut down. It literally happened 3 days before. All our marketing material was out and everything had been released and very clearly in my head in December, I asked myself, ‘Am I thinking from my head or from my heart?’ Because it was a film that was very close to our hearts and I was very emotionally involved in the character and the father-son dynamic had affected me personally as well. And my director and producer, Aman and Gautam, both of them were very keen that the film goes to the big screen.”
The actor continued, “And when in December it didn’t happen, I was really thinking that should we just straight go to digital now. Because its really difficult to repeatedly keep creating the hype around the film, especially when all your material is out and then unfortunately we released in April, which was not a great month for us because there was a certain mood and a certain type of cinema which the audience was watching and we had shifted our date multiple times by the time we released, but you are still optimistic and hopeful thinking that things will get sorted but it didn’t work out like that and I feel maybe we didn’t do the right thing on the film maybe the film needed to be protected.”
Shahid will next be seen making his web series debut with filmmakers Raj and DK and director Ali Abbas Zafar’s Bloody Daddy.
News Source:- The Indian EXPRESS
