Vivek Agnihotri opens up on lukewarm response to The Vaccine War: ‘Jitne log Playboy khareedte utne log…’

Vivek Agnihotri is addressing the lukewarm box office response to his film The Vaccine War, which released in theatres on September 28.

In an interview with Siddharth Kannan, the director opened up on how it is a different film which will find its own audience. To explain the point, Vivek said that one cannot expect the same number of people to buy the Geeta as the Playboy magazine.

In his interview with Siddharth Kannan, Vivek Agnihotri was asked to comment on the several reports that have tagged the box office reports of the film to be ‘lukewarm.’ In his response, the director said, “Lukewarm response matlab unhone ye socha ki bhai jitne log Playboy khareedte utne log Geeta bhi khareedte hein. Aisa nahi hota he. Aisa thodi hota he? Duniya ki reality bilkul different hoti he (They must mean by lukewarm response that the number of people who buy Playboy magazine are the same as the ones who buy Bhagavad Geeta. How can that happen? The reality of this world is very different).”

Vivek further added, “The world is very different. Among the ones that went to see the film, almost 90% of them are feeling elated… you won’t find a single negative review there. Everybody is saying, ‘Oh my god! This is such a wonderful film!’ It gives so much of laughter, so much of tears, and in the end we come out with pride. We learnt so much from the film.” The director then said that these reports are just based on negative PR and nothing more.

The official description of The Vaccine War reads, “The Vaccine War talks about the struggle of Indian scientists behind the development of vaccines and also unfolds many stories that went behind the curtains.” It stars Nana Patekar as the head of scientists, as they proceed on the journey to create India’s first vaccine against Covid-19.

They face a number of issues on the way, from budget constraints to negative narratives that are set by the media. Anupam Kher, Raima Sen, Sapthami Gowda and Pallavi Joshi play pivotal roles in the film. The film earned ₹1.5 crore nett in India on its third day, after earning ₹85 lakh and ₹90 lakh on the first two days respectively.

The film read, “At 2 hours 40 minutes, the film is a tad long for the story it sets out to show. The first half is dull especially when ICMR and NIV are trying to find a middle path to conduct various tests on the novel virus. The second half get better.”