The producers of Kabir Khan’s exhilarating sports drama ’83 are a worried lot. No matter how big a blockbuster ’83 turn out to be—and it promises to be the biggest hit of 2021 hands-down—it can never, repeat never, make back its investment, no matter how high up it goes in the boxoffice collections.
During an off-the-record heart-to-heart chat with me one of the producers confessed the collective anxiety of the ’83 team : “The final budget of the film is Rs 270 crores which makes it an even more costly film than Baahubali. Our basic production cost was Rs 210. That included the payment for every cricketer; we paid each one of them anything between Rs 3-7 crores for the rights to their story. Then as the film’s release had to be postponed repeatedly we had to pay interest. Our final budget came to Rs 270 Crores.”
The producers feel there is no way they can recover their production costs.
“This is an expensive film where the costs went into financial arrangements behind the scenes ,like paying the cricketers, hiring Lords cricket ground in London to shoot the final match at the actual venue, etc. Unlike Baahubali or Devdas, the budget doesn’t show on screen in 83, ” says the producer.