Vikram Vedha on OTT: When Hrithik Roshan puzzled over film's commercial failure

Finally, after months of waiting, Vikram Vedha, starring Hrithik Roshan and Saif Ali Khan in the lead roles, made its much-awaited digital debut on Friday. Vikram Vedha is streaming on JioCinema . The movie is the remake of the Tamil hit of the same name and was written and directed by Pushkar-Gayathri. 

The Hindi remake was released in cinemas in September 2022 amid a lot of expectations. The movie, however, struggled to draw the audiences to theatres despite good reviews . The film's commercial failure took many by surprise. At the time the movie buffs in the Hindi-speaking belt were showing up at the cinemas in large numbers for Hindi-dubbed versions of South Indian movies, but they didn't extend the same support to the original Hindi movies. And many wondered whether the Hindi-speaking audience was losing interest in south remakes. 

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Even Hrithik, who played a wise-cracking gangster in the movie, reflected on the poor box-office performance of Vikram Vedha. During an interview with Galatta Plus, he said, "You never know. I still don't know. Was it the original consumed a lot through the pandemic, you know, because the content was going insane? People were watching everything and anything. Everyone had watched the film (the Tamil original of Vikram Vedha). You never really know what to attribute it to."

The failure of Vikram Vedha raised concerns about the future of South remakes in Bollywood. Vikram Vedha is not alone. Other big-budget movies like Kartik Aaryan-starrer Shehzada and Akshay Kumar's Selfiee, which were the remakes of Ala Vaikunthapurramuloo and Ayyappanum Koshiyum respectively, were also commercial disasters. Even Ajay Devgan's action drama Bholaa, which is the remake of Tamil blockbuster Kaithi, performed below expectations at the box office.

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The plot of Vikram Vedha centres around the thrilling pursuit of the cunning gangster Vedha, portrayed by Hrithik Roshan, by the no-nonsense cop Vikram, played by Saif Ali Khan. Vedha's crafty tactics keep him ahead of the police, who are determined to capture him, adding a cat-and-mouse element to the storyline.