It is finally confirmed! ‘Marakkar: Lion Of The Arabian Sea’ is officially releasing directly for streaming on OTT. After last night’s talks failed, the film’s producer, Antony Perumbavoor confirmed that this film will premiere on Amazon Prime Video and his four upcoming Mohanlal films will also release on an OTT platform as well. These four films include – the Prithviraj directorial ‘BroDaddy’, Joju Joseph’s ’12th Man’, the 2022 year releasing ‘Alone’ and an untitled film which will be directed by Vysakh.
Now many of you will say that the ‘Marakkar’-OTT premiere is old news – and you would be partly right. Antony Perumbavoor had made this announcement after the first talks held with the various Kerala theatre associations fell apart, which happened two days ago. However, the producer was willing to change his mind, if his primary demand was met. Yesterday night, the producer again sat down with many theatre owners, but this time the Minister of Culture, Saji Cheriyan oversaw proceedings.
Antony had mostly been very angry about the lies that he has been hearing in the media by this point – including the one that stated theatre associations had paid the producer Rs. 40 crores to acquire the film. While the theatre associations never confirmed this, he was annoyed that they didn’t deny it either. In reality, he was given an amount close to Rs. 4.9 crores. But money wasn’t the producer’s main demand. He wanted ‘Marakkar’ to be the only film running in Kerala theatres for a period of 20 days, starting from the day it is first released in cinemas. He had sent a contract regarding the same to all theatre chains across Kerala and according to him, only 89 out of 230 theatres sent back signed copies. It was for this reason that the producer opted for a direct-to-OTT release.