5 minutes of readingNew DelhiFebruary 9, 2026 11:49 am
Filmmaker Shekhar KapurKnown for iconic films like masomMr. India and Bandit Queen took to
The filmmaker shared a photo with the cast of the film, including Shabana Azmi, Naseeruddin Shah, Urmila Matondkar and Jugal Hansraj. He described how he walked into the theater on the first day of the premiere and found one more person next to him in the movie theater.
Shekhar Kapur recalls Masoom’s poor opening
“On the first day of release, I went to the main theater… and there were only two people in the entire theater… and one of them was me!” he wrote.
He spoke about the prevalence of black ticket marketing at the time, where youths and gangs would purchase movie seats to resell at higher prices. Kapur remembers facing angry crowds outside the theatre: “I was surrounded by some young men outside who seemed quite angry when they found out I was the director…they had lost their money that day.”
“I must have looked pretty dejected. So one of them actually took pity on me and said… ‘Sir… the problem is that you have made an ‘feature’ movie… if you want a career, don’t do that.”
“Movie article? I was wondering… movie article… I realized he meant an ‘art film’… Never make an art film, this young black merchant was trying to warn me…”
He revealed that from Friday to Tuesday, movie theaters remained empty, prompting distributors to begin removing the film from theaters and leaving him convinced that his film career was over.
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“I remember the feeling of that day… when they told me that they had decided to stop trying to maintain the theaters… I walked through the streets of Bombay and I thought about what I was going to do next in my life, because making movies was certainly no longer an option,” the actor wrote.
Check out a photo again from my first film, Masoom.
On the first day of the premiere, I went to the main theater… and there were only two people in the entire theater… and one of them was me!
In those days, the ‘black marketing’ of movie tickets was really prelavent… young men, or even… pic.twitter.com/FyqT3iFlnx
– Shekhar Kapur (@shekharkapur) February 9, 2026
How Masoom became a success
Despite the slow start, Kapur shared how the film’s fortunes changed in an unexpected way.
“Something strange happened on Thursday. A friend called me and asked if I could help him get tickets for Masoom. I told him it was a bad joke. On Thursday a movie theater was full… then on Friday there were lines of people waiting to buy tickets… and over the weekend distributors fought to get back the theaters they had given up, and my film ‘Article’ was declared a hit..”
Kapur described it as a mystery and noted that while people attribute the success to “word of mouth,” almost no one had seen the film initially. “What happened that Thursday?… I’m still wondering, as I’m about to start making ‘Masoom, The Next Generation’… years after Masoom, the original became a cult film,” he wrote.
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Kapur ended his post, looking ahead to his next project, Masoom: The Next Generation, and wondering if this new chapter would also be labeled as an “item film.”
About Masoom: The Next Generation
Masoom: The Next Generation, a spiritual sequel to the 1983 classic, will star stalwarts of the original, Shabana Azmi and Naseeruddin Shah, along with Manoj Bajpayee and Nithya Menen. Shekhar’s daughter Kaveri also wants to appear in the film.
The film promises to delve into modern themes of home, belonging, and the search for personal identity.
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in it previous interview with SCREEN, Kapur had opened up about taking a turn with his next after Masoom, Bandit Queen. “Bandit Queen was my anger at myself, for not paying attention to the fundamental issues of society. It’s a very angry film, it was against myself. What made me so insensitive for not having seen it before? So when I saw the results of my film, in theaters or wherever I went, people came out angry. People asked me, ‘What happened to you sir? He is such a beautiful filmmaker who made Mr India and Masoom. He has made such beautiful films! Yeh kya kar diya?’ (What have you done?)’”