Director Tejas Deoskar on lukewarm box office response of Ground Zero: Wanted to make a realistic movie…

DIrector Tejas Prabha Vijay Deoskar, whose a la mode(p) take run aground zero in released years after the terror attack in Pahalgam last month, recalls the turmoil he felt when he heard the news. “I have seen the Kashmir where [the attack] took place. We had a screening of the film in Srinagar, just three days before this incident. Mujhe dhakka laga,” he says.Ask if he was worried about how this might affect the film’s performance and Tejas replies, “It wasn’t mentally and emotionally possible for us to even think about our film when we heard the news. The entire team was shaken. If I start thinking about whether this will benefit our film, I’ll be finished as a person.”Starring Emraan Hashmi, Ground Zero tells the story of Border Security Force officer Narendra Nath Dhar Dubey, who led a 2003 operation to track down Ghazi Baba, the terrorist behind the 2001 Parliament attacks.Despite its theme, the film opened to mixed reviews and a tepid box-office response, collecting around ₹1 crore on opening day. “I do not take criticism as negative reviews. The audience gives unbiased reviews and I’ve only received positive messages from complete strangers,” the director reflects. He does admit, however, “A lot of people told me ‘Aapki film mein koi masala nahin hai, koi heroism nahin hai’, but I take that as a compliment. Achcha hai na, I’m true to the subject. I wanted to make it realistic and not a ‘filmi’ movie.”Does he think the film would have fared better, had it not released around the same time as Kesari 2, Raid 2, and the re-release of Andaz Apna Apna (1994)? The 42-year-old disagrees: “We only have 52 Fridays; you can’t deny the fact that there will be films before you, with you, after you, few of which will do well while others may not. If you’ve made a good film and have put it in the right spot, you’ve done your job. My job was to make a good film and I’ve given it my all.”However, Tejas also notes audience preferences have evolved due to the ease OTT provides. “The response I’ve received personally and the collections [of the films] do not match. Some people also told me, ‘We hear your film is good, will watch it when it comes on OTT’. A section of the audience now believes that if a film is good if it lands on a particular OTT platform. Viewers’ yardstick and assumptions have also changed. So, there could be a number of reasons behind why the film didn’t work at the box-office,” the director muses, adding, “But I can’t be disheartened thinking, ‘Jitne number hone chahiye thhe utne nahin huye hain, because the film wasn’t good’. That is not the case. I don’t think one should spare too much thought on this.”