 "John Abraham 'disheartened' as his film 'Tehran' releases on OTT: 'Theatres were a little wary of picking up a film that had Iran and Israel and...'")
John Abraham’s film Tehran has been awaiting its release since 2023. It finally releases on Zee5 during the Independence Day weekend. And in an interview with Bollywood Hungama, the actor broke his silence on the same.
John revealed, “It’s very disheartening. I’m not going to mince my words on it, but it breaks your heart, especially for an actor who always wants to be seen on the big screen. But we all made a very informed decision on that. And the decision was that because of the conflicts and controversies that are happening around internationally.”
The actor added, “Theatres were a little wary of picking up a film that had Iran and Israel in it. We had a choice of either showing the film somewhere or not showing it at all.”
On the film’s limited audience
Zee5 has been gracious and told us they would be our platform. But it also breaks your heart as an actor who only wants to be seen on the big screen. I treat this more like a foreign film in a way. When you will see the film, you will understand that why it will not resonate with a larger audience. It has got a lot of Farsi in it and a lot of Hebrew in it. It’s only 1 hour and 50 minutes long. It’s got a lot of foreign language in it.
The film is called Tehran and once you enter Tehran, you are not going to be speaking in Hindi. I think my producer is best equipped to answer that question. Having said all of it, it’s finally coming out.