Others in the film business said they had learnt the hard way that it would never be easy getting any film with a reference to bin Laden past Pakistan's fastidious censor board.
"Look at the case of Tere bin Laden, the comedy starring Ali Zafar. The subject was such that we had to go through so many ministries and the censor board, and it was finally never released," said Mohsin Yaseen, the general manager for marketing for Cinepax, Pakistan's first multiplex chain.
Zero Dark Thirty tackles what is still a "touchy subject" for Pakistani audiences, and distributors decided to "keep away from it", Yaseen said.
"It would not be feasible for us to screen it in Pakistan," he said.
Though filmed in India, Zero Dark Thirty is largely set in Pakistan and tracks the CIA's decade-long hunt for the world's most wanted man.
Bin Laden was finally tracked to a compound located a stone's throw from the elite Pakistan Military Academy in Abbottabad, just 120 km from Islamabad, and killed in a unilateral American military raid on May 2, 2011.
The raid embarrassed the security establishment and the ISI, which were criticised by lawmakers and the public for failing to detect bin Laden's presence in Pakistan for five years and to prevent the mission by the US Navy SEALS.
