Why Karan Johar’s ‘Homebound’, India’s official entry to the Oscars failed to attract audiences to theatres?

Mumbai, Sep 27 (IANS) Ishaan Khatter and Janhvi Kapoor starrer “Homebound” finally reached the cinema halls on Friday,Sep 26. Despite being India’s official entry for the Oscars, the drama was given a limited number of screens in the theatres.

Not just that, it also failed to attract the audience to the theatres, given that small numbers of cinema goers, whoever went, appreciated Karan Johar’s project wholeheartedly

During an exclusive conversation with IANS, filmcritic and journalist Ramachandran Srinivasan was asked, “Homebound has been chosen as India’s official entry for the Oscars. What do you think about the perception that it has been sidelined in India?

Reacting to this, he stated that the short duration of “Homebound” could be a major reason why the film did not get a positive response in India.

“When you say a film like Homebound is one hour and four minutes long, and after censorship, you are left with just about one hour and two minutes, the question arises—why would I spend the same amount of money watching such a film when I could watch a full-fledged entertainer in theatres? That’s possibly one of the major reasons why Homebound was not widely welcomed at home,” he said.

Commenting on whether there was enough of a campaign to create awareness for “Homebound”, Ramachandran shared, “Multiplexes, which are the primary target for a film like this, need programmers who allocate screens based on buzz and box office performance.”

“The collections weren’t strong—around seventy-five lakhs in early shows—which made programmers hesitant. They’d rather back a film that fills theatres than one that has just a handful of viewers”, he added.

He was further questioned about why film like “Lunchbox” worked well internationally despite not having big stars and why Homebound didn’t achieve similar success.

To this, he pointed out that “Lunchbox” did well in both India and abroad.

However, “Homebound” has performed weaker internationally than domestically.

“That’s possibly why it has not lived up to expectations both at home and outside. But that doesn’t mean filmmakers get discouraged. Every film has its own destiny. The real challenge is awareness—when audiences don’t even know a film is releasing amidst so many web shows and movies, how will they come to theatres?”, he concluded.

–IANS

pm/