John Abraham’s ‘The Diplomat’ has been ruling the theaters and has made it to headlines. The political thriller film is by Shivam Nair and is based on real-life events. The core theme of the film revolves around India-Pakistan relations, diplomacy as well and personal conflicts between the diplomats of both nations.
The film has garnered praise from all sides - from critics to audience - but it is only receiving positive responses. But, interestingly, the OTT release of the film is unsure as several OTT platforms believed that it was not good enough, according to the film actor John Abraham.
Recently, John Abraham had a conversation with Pinkvilla, and he revealed that online streaming platforms reject films. He was quoted saying, “The loss of faith happens from the studio. So when a studio sees a film, it goes and does a round of OTTs because a studio may want to mitigate the risk by sending it to an OTT channel. Some OTT channels have refused The Diplomat because they didn't find it great. They didn't find it good. They rejected the film; they threw it out.”
He furthermore mentioned that no one expected The Diplomat to perform this well, and how it has been performing in the theatres has proved everyone, including the OTT platforms, wrong, and he counted it as his victory.
John was quoted saying, “The best thing about The Diplomat...is expectations of everyone were zero. So, from zero, when you don't go to a two-three, but you go straight to a 10, people are like, 'Oh, wow, this is crazy.' I have people coming and telling me, 'Does this studio know that they have got the best film in the last ten years under their belt?' That's a victory for me.”
The performance of The Diplomat -
According to certain reports, The Diplomat was made using a budget of around Rs 20 crore, and surprisingly, the budget of the film was recovered within the first ten (10) days of its release. On the first day of the release, it earned around Rs 4 crore, and on the second and third day, it crossed the bar of Rs 4 crore, too. The total earnings of the film reached Rs 19.10 crore during the first week.
The weekly earnings of the film are around -
Day 1 - Rs 4 crore
Day 2 - Rs 4.65 crore
Day 3 - Rs 4.65 crore
Day 4 - Rs 1.5 crore
Day 5 - 1.45 crore
Day 6 - Rs 1.5 crore
Day 7 - ₹ 1.35 crore (opening)
The film was released on March 14, 2025. It is produced by John’s JA Entertainment and T-Series, Rakesh Dang of Seeta Films, Rajesh Bahl of Wakaoo Films, Sameer Dixit and Jatish Varma of Fortune Pictures, Vipul D Shah and Ashwin Varde.