Ananya-Ishaan’s Khaali Peeli To Release In Theatres Unlike Janhvi Kapoor’s Gunjan Saxena: The Kargil Girl

For a pretty long time, rumors had been doing the rounds suggesting that Netflix had acquired Khaali Peeli and Gunjan Saxena: The Kargil Girl for direct OTT release. However, no official confirmation for the same was shared for a while. Much to our delight, recently Janhvi Kapoor announced that her upcoming film Gunjan Saxena: The Kargil Girl will in fact release directly on Netflix amid the coronavirus lockdown. She shared a new poster along with a special video message. However, the fate of Khaali Peeli was unknown. Until today!

A report in Bollywood Hungama suggests that Ananya Panday and Ishaan Khatter’s romantic action film Khaali Peeli will be releasing in theatres first. A source was quoted saying, “Zee Studios has some significant films lined up for release like Maidaan, Gunjan Saxena – The Kargil Girl, Khaali Peeli and Suraj Pe Mangal Bhari. The trend nowadays is to put smaller and mid-sized films on OTT. Hence, Maidaan is ruled out as it’s one of the biggest forthcoming films. But there were talks that its other films might take the OTT bait. But it has now emerged that Khaali Peeli and Suraj Pe Mangal Bhari will be releasing in cinemas first. Khaali Peeli, in fact, would be one of the first films to release once theatres are given permission to function.”

The source also revealed that the decision to release Gunjan Saxena: The Kargil Girl directly on an OTT platform was taken by Karan Johar’s Dharma Productions. Apparently they needed cash flow to pay salaries of staff and to bear other costs amid the lockdown. So when they got a good offer from Netflix, they decided to go ahead with it. Source stated, “It was a tough decision for them but they had to go for it, considering the situation.”