Day before yesterday, Malayalam actress Rajisha Vijayan announced on Twitter, through her official account, that her latest film ‘Kho Kho’ is now streaming on Amazon Prime, Saina Play and a couple of other OTTs. With this movie making the shift from theatres to the digital platform, the future of theatres and cinema halls in Kerala continue to look bleak. With it now being a month since the state-wide lockdown, with theatres having been shut for even longer – we have no idea when the theatres in Kerala will open up again. Which is a shame, as the Malayalam film industry is continuing to produce cinematic gold and they are all going straight to OTTS.
‘Kho Kho’ released in theatres on 14th April 2021 and the film was withdrawn from theatres on 20th April 2021 (not even running for a week), due to the increasing number of Covid-19 cases. Even Manju Warrier’s ‘Chathur Mukham’ suffered a similar hit and a week later, on 27th April 2021, all theatres in Kerala were shut down in Kerala as per State Government ruling. Films like ‘Nayattu’, ‘Nizhal’, ‘Operation Java’, among others quickly shifted to OTT, since their films were out for at least 2-3 weeks and the word about the movies had spread. This is where ‘Kho Kho’ took a hit. And this forced them to go for an OTT release.
Big budget films can afford to go to OTTS, but small – medium budget films won’t get a lot of money from OTTs for streaming and they usually get unfavourable contracts from streaming companies as part of its streaming policy for regional films. Add to the fact that one OTT is not exclusively streaming the movie, the film producers will make even less. Still ‘Kho Kho’s’ film producer thought this was the better option than the alternative, which makes the theatre situation in Kerala quite scary. For now, we will have to wait and see.
Kho Kho is streaming on Amazon Prime Video, Saina Play, Simply South and Filme. Check out the film’s trailer, below: