If you guys didn’t know already, Anto Joseph wrote a letter to Film Exhibitors United Organization of Kerala (FEUOK) and Kerala Film Exhibitors Federation (KFEF) informing them of his plan to release his productions ‘Malik’ and ‘Cold Case’ directly in OTT platforms, a few days ago. The Malayalam film producer is hoping to get the blessings of both associations with this letter and with how the film producer has been advocating for the theatre owners and distributors during these tough times, we expect him to get some support from both unions. And with the way Malayalam films are being scooped up by Amazon Prime Video, the OTT giant could hit gold if they manage to release these films on their streaming platform.
Amazon Prime Video has been THE major OTT platform that has been keeping an eye on Malayalam film releases for a while now. While the three other big OTT platforms – Netflix, Disney+ Hotstar and Zee5 have been buying up streaming rights for a few of them and releasing a few for streaming, Amazon Prime Video has consistently been keeping an eye out for good Malayalam movies (‘The Great Indian Kitchen’ being one of its rare “glitches”). If Anto Joseph manages to turn over his prized productions over to Amazon Prime Video, this could very well be counted as a message sent by the streaming platform to its competitors about its “favourable” position within Mollywood.
Kerala is one of the Indian states that are posting up some of the worst coronavirus case numbers since the pandemic started last year. The second wave has hit the Southern state quite hard and the state has been undergoing strict lockdown for a month. With no end in sight for the lockdown, many major Malayalam films have already opted to release their movies on streaming platforms and we can’t say we are surprised by the decision either. And with Amazon Prime Video being one of the OTT platforms that are showing interest for the films’ streaming rights, the movies are almost guaranteed a certain amount of views due the platform’s popularity.
Theatres have been shut down in Kerala for 6 weeks and are to remain closed for the foreseeable future. Even if the lockdown restrictions are eased sometime in the near future (which won’t happen, as the lockdown restrictions just increased within the state a few days ago), the theatres are expected to be shut down for at least 3-4 weeks more. This undesirable situation pushed all the Malayalam movies which were previously running in the theatres – ‘Nizhal’, ‘Chathur Mukham’, ‘Nayattu’, ‘Aarkkariyam’ among others to opt for multi-OTT release; another “trend” that has been popular among Malayalam digital releases recently.
Prithviraj starrer ‘Cold Case’ was supposed to be a direct-to-OTT release from the start. The cop film was made differently from other police movies, with the movie featuring very minimal action sequences, with a lot more investigation to be shown on screen. But as the Kerala State Government lifted the first lockdown and eventually opened the theatres within the state, the production house decided to release the film in theatres, late in April. However the film’s production slowed down and then theatres got shut again. With theatres closed indefinitely and now with this letter, we are very assuredly looking at an OTT release for ‘Cold Case’ now.
Fahadh Faasil’s ‘Malik’ is a different case however. This movie was supposed to be released in theatres last year, in mid-April 2020. Obviously, the pandemic hit and then the release date for the film was put on hold indefinitely. The movie got rescheduled to have an Eid release date of 13th May 2021, but then the second lockdown happened. This should be enough for Antony Joseph to decide on an OTT release and with the previously mentioned letter; ‘Malik’ is finally going to become a direct-to-OTT released film.
For now we will have to wait and see, to get an official announcement regarding the OTT direction(s) these Antony Joseph productions will take, but we expect the announcements to be in the forms of trailers which will have the Amazon Prime Video logo in their newly released trailers.
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