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While 2018 has proven to be a year of success for some, director/producer Shoaib Khan of romantic-comedy film Jackpot doesn’t quite feel that way.

His film, which featured Sanam Chaudhry and Noor Hassan in lead roles, was released on July 6, but failed to make big bucks at the box office as, he claims, it did not get adequate screen time. Shoaib is now re-releasing Jackpot on 11 January 2019 to redeem their losses.

In an exclusive conversation with Something Haute, Shoaib revealed how and why the re-release of the film is happening. “We released the film on 6th July across Pakistan but we did not get the right showtimes. The film’s showtimes were either at 10am or 2am and the main reason behind that was the release of Bollywood film Sanju. The cinemas, of course, had their own interests as a result of which we did not get proper shows, he said.

“We observed the whole situation for three to four days then but, keeping in view the circumstances, we retracted the film. And since then we have been in talks with the cinemas about re-releasing the film if we are given an adequate number of shows. And they have agreed.”

Read: Jackpot review: A confused comedy

Shoaib says that although the film could not make a mark at the box office when it was released in July, it received positive feedback from the small number of cinema-goers who had the chance of watching the film. “The edge we had was the feedback we received from people who watched the film, it was 90% positive. The cinema authorities remembered that and realized that it was a misunderstanding on their part and the selection was made poorly back then,” he added.

 

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Will he re-promote the film ahead of its re-release? “This film is our own production so, we won’t be able to promote the film on the same level as we did when it first released. We will promote it through social media and cinemas, but not at the same magnitude.”

Ayesha Ghaffar

The author is a Sub-Editor at Something Haute and a fresh Journalism graduate from SZABIST. She is paving the way for her future in the field of media and reporting. When she is not working, she is busy watching Penguin videos and staying away from cats.