Manoj Bajpayee calls Joram 'quite successful' compared to big films despite low box office earnings

Manoj Bajpayee's Joram which was screened at International Film Festival Rotterdam in February, Sydney Film Festival in June, Durban International Film Festival and Chicago International Film Festival in October, finally hit the Indian theaters on December 8 in selected theaters. However, the lead star isn't happy for how the film was received by the audience despite opening to positive reviews by critics.

Manoj Bajpayee discusses Joram's box office

While the film is about to complete a month in theater, Manoj Bajpayee in an interview with Jist, discussed the box office performance of the film and said while gesturing at the audience, "Inmein se kisi ne nahi dekhi hogi (no one here must have watched Joram)." He further added, "I am telling you, it is a possibility. We had purposely released Joram in very few theatres because we wanted to gauge if the audiences' brain work the same way as we think, or if they only want to watch other kind of films."

Speaking about people's attitude towards films like Joram, Manoj Bajpayee said that people don't believe in such films and even if they do, they want to watch them for free.

He said, "The same people will take a loan to watch other kinds of films, they are okay doing that, it’s their taste. Our fight is about this. We want to see how interested they are in watching the kind of films we want to make.”

Why Joram opted for theater release?

In the same interview, Manoj Bajpayee addressed why the makers of Joram opted for a theater debut while most content-driven, small scale films like Joram are often released on streaming platforms.

He said, "All films will end up on OTT eventually. We did an experiment, even when we knew what the results would be. We wanted to release Joram in theatres and observe, do it in lesser number of screens and see if audiences will step out of their houses to watch the film or not."

He added, "Tickets for the film were cheap, but people didn’t go. We had released Joram in 350 screens, if people would have gone to watch the film, at a full capacity in these 350 screens, then we would have earned Rs 60 lakh. We weren’t even looking at earning in crores, we wanted to take a risk. Per day the film earned around 15-19 lakh, which is very good compared to the big films which have 5000-6000 screens. If you look at the ratio, Joram is quite a successful film."

What do we know about Joram?

Joram, directed by Devashish Makhija, revolves around a desperate man and his infant daughter fleeing a system that wants them crushed at any cost. The film also stars Mohammed Zeeshan Ayyub, Smita Tambe, and Tannishtha Chatterjee in important roles.