OTT Dumping Ground For  Flop Films?

Watching the  ‘grand’ premiere of Gulabo Sitabo, a film no one has liked except a  handful of  learned critics, it becomes crystal-clear that  the  OTT platform is being used  by  the film industry to get rid of Coronavus-affected products that would otherwise  get  near-zero attendance in  cinema halls.

The real  big  Bollywood  players  are steering clear of the digital  platform.

So we have  Shoojit Sircar quickly jumping into the digital  domain with Gulabo Sitabo  with  suspicious  enthusiasm

 Says a source close  to the  development, “Neither Mr Bachchan nor Ayushmann Khurrana  were informed of  the digital deal with Amazon. Sircar and  the co-producers walked away with a cool 65 crores rupees  for  the digital  rights  of Gulabo Sitabo which is double  the film’s  production costs.”

This is a better deal than what the film would have  got  were it to be  released  in movie theatres. Karan  Johar’s Gunjan Saxena : The Kargil Girl is  also treading the same  path.Apparently Netflix  has  paid close to  70  crores for  the  premiere  rights  of  the  film.Considering the  film’s production  costs were  around Rs 25-30  crores that’s  a neat profit  for Johar even before the  film’s release.

   Sadly  the major   international players  in  the  OTT  market are  being taken for granted by  Indian producers who know they’ve an iffy  project on hand which perhaps  audiences won’t be enthused  to experience in  movie theatres  during these  times  of  the Coronova  Virus.

But what Neflix, Amazon and other globally  acknowledged names  in  the  OTT market must  realize is that they  are being given little  VFM. Bollywood  is  using  these  international  labels as a  dumping ground for projects that are potentially  non-profitable  in movie theatres  during  the lockdown.