RoohiAfzana director Hardik Mehta ‘okay’ with both OTT and theatre release: Two-and-a-half months’ work still left – bollywood

With producers and multiplexes at loggerheads about the fate of films that were meant for a theatrical release but are now coming out on OTT platforms, director Hardik Mehta says he’s okay with either of the mediums.

His film RoohiAfzana, a horror comedy, headlined by Rajkummar Rao, Janhvi Kapoor and Varun Sharma, got stuck because of the theatre shutdown in mid-March due to the Covid-19 crisis.

He tells us, “I’ll stand by my producers. I was thinking even Kaamyaab (starring Sanjay Mishra), my debut directorial, might not get a theatrical release, and will go digital because it was a small film. But we got a messiah called Shah Rukh Khan (as a presenter), and then it released in theatres. I’m happy because that’s a greed every filmmaker has. And then we made a big splash on OTT also.” 

Mehta is ecstatic that more people got to watch it on the web, and he got messages on the same from all strata of society. “If films like Gunjan Saxena and Gulabo Sitabo are taking the digital route, and tomorrow my producer wants to follow suit, I’ll stand by him. And, if he wants to go for a theatrical and wait, why not? This is not a diplomatic answer, I believe in it,” he maintains.

RoohiAfzana was originally slated to release on June 5, but the pandemic and the subsequent lockdown was a setback.Mehta reveals, “We are two-and-a-half months away from finishing the film. The shoot is complete, but the VFX is a lot interesting and there’s a certain sound design required because it’s a horror-comedy. We haven’t even opened yet, but when we do, from then, it’ll take two and a half months for release. That kind of makes us a little comfortable.”

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