For the Indian film industry, the Diwali release is one of the high points of the year, when big stars and big releases line up to attract moviegoers flush with their bonuses and festive good cheer. This year is no less—the screen may have gotten smaller, but not the excitement. OTT is where the action is this time around, thanks to the pandemic and its aftermath of cinema halls going into lockdown mode.
“It’s a new normal… the best option right now,” noted film director Anurag Basu told THE WEEK. Basu, whose hits include the likes of Murder, Life in a Metro and Barfi, has his latest film, the Abhishek Bachchan-starrer Ludo opening not in cinemas, but on the OTT platform Netflix on Thursday.
Ludo is only one among the many ‘Diwali releases’ popping up on OTT this festive week. Akshay Kumar’s Laxmii Bomb was also released just couple of days ago. Disney+ Hotstar says it has had the biggest opening viewership among all films that premiered so far directly on OTT, though no figures have been shared (Critics have been brutal, though!). Down south, Suriya’s Soorarai Pottru, a loose adaptation of the life story of Air Deccan’s Captain Gopinath, is Amazon Prime's Diwali ace.
Traditionally, movies opened to bouquets (or often, brickbats) in cinemas, and moved on to other, albeit lesser, revenue-earning modes like TV premiere and DVD release. The ratio was approximately 70:30 in favour of collection from theatres. For the last two decades or so, commercial tie-ups, in-film brand placements and so forth also garnered many films substantial income.
However, all that has been turned upside down by the pandemic, with cinema halls closed for months on end. Even though permission to re-open was granted by the Centre by end-September, many state governments relented only this month. Even then, many halls have decided to continue to remain shut, keeping in mind the fact that the general public was reticent to come in for fear of infection.
It is here that the OTT platforms stepped in. It started in March with Gulabo Sitabo, an Amitabh Bachchan-Ayushmann Khurrana starrer no less, and was followed by scores of films across multiple languages. This ranged from the likes of Dil Bechara, the last film of Sushant Singh Rajput, which was premiered on Hotstar a few weeks after the actor’s death, to Netflix’s Gunjan Saxena and Amazon’s Shakuntala Devi biopic starring Vidya Balan. Many Tamil, Telugu and Malayalam films also came out exclusively on streaming platforms, like Penguin in Telugu and C U Soon in Malayalam.
“People want pictures, and they are locked up at home. There are only 52 weeks for movie releases. So we thought, why not use the pandemic to create a big, big alternative world of a virtual, private theatre in everybody’s homes,” said Uday Shankar, the-then chairman of Disney India, which runs Disney+ Hotstar, at its announcement to premiere films online, back in the summer.
“As a (filmmaker) you want more and more people to see your film. Today, this is the only option left,” points out Basu. Ludo was scheduled for a theatrical release in April but the lockdown scuttled those plans. For film producers, the longer the wait for a film to release, the higher the piling up of debt. So then, selling a film to deep-pocketed streaming service providers sounds like the next-best thing.
“The OTT model works if you know in advance where your film is releasing and you plan accordingly,” says Basu. While Ludo was what he calls ‘a compact film’ and hence the deal with Netflix ‘didn’t hurt much’, the same theory may not work for, say, a big-budget magnum opus from Bhansali with a cost that cannot be covered by an OTT deal. (On the flip-side, the film producers save on the huge promotional and distribution costs associated with a theatrical release across the country).
For the deep-pocketed OTT biggies, it’s a different way to garner eyeballs. Unlike TV, where revenue comes in from DTH subscriptions as well as ad revenue, OTT depends on subscriptions alone. However, bagging a mainline movie for premiering helps in garnering new subscribers and keeping them hooked in the long run.
But will the trend of releasing a movie directly on OTT fade away once the pandemic is over? OTT players are hopeful it will be ‘the new normal’. “Do not see this as a short-term tactical compromise; we should see this as a very big leap. It is not an ‘either or’ question; it is a multiplier,” Uday Shankar had said earlier.
But for movie-makers, the magic of a darkened hall, silver screen and popcorn from the concessionaire still lures. “Watching films in theatres is a community event, an experience which will never go away from India. I think it will go back to normal. I think more and more people will come out to the theatres,” feels Anurag Basu, though he says audiences have become more cinema literate now after watching different genres of content on OTT. “They have learned to appreciate good cinema—people were watching content, not just an actor and his talent.”
Basu adds succinctly, “Over the years, theatres, TV, satellite, DVDs, OTT… all of it has come and flourished. I think cinema theatres and OTT will both co-exist… because people now have more options to get entertained. More the merrier.”
