Just yesterday (3rd May 2021), we were talking about the Kunchacko Boban – Joju Geroge Malayalam survival thriller ‘Nayattu’ planning to release on Netflix, later this month. Now, even more films are planning to take the OTT route – popular Malayalam films such as ‘Chathur Mukham’, ‘Operation Java’ and ‘Nizhal’. These films have been doing well in the Kerala Box Office (for sometime, in some cases), but with the huge rise in Covid-19 cases observed in the last couple of months, in Kerala in particular, the State Government has implemented strict restriction rules on the general public which has hurt theatres so far.
These restrictions also include scraping up the night shows/ side shows in every theatre and closing cinema halls by 7:30 pm at the latest. The night shows were only included from the first week of March so that theatre owners will finally be able to make up some money which they lost during the pandemic, but the second wave of the Covid-19 has effectively “killed” that idea. With film producers pushing the released dates of upcoming hyped/ popular movies, despite an Eid release date coming up in a couple of weeks (by the end of the second week of May) – the theatre associations in Kerala are planning to close down a huge amount of theatres so as to save extra costs.
And when this comes into effect, aforementioned films like ‘Nizhal’, ‘Chathur Mukham’ and ‘Nayattu’ which have only been in theatres for a month, will suddenly have a lot less people coming to theatres (with most of them being closed). ‘Nayattu’ is planning to come out on Netflix by the end of this month. Manju Warrier’s ‘Chathur Mukham’ is going to Zee5 as per latest reports and the Kunchacko Boban – Nayanthara starrer ‘Nizhal’ is planning to stream on Amazon Prime Video soon.
So far, there has been no official confirmations regarding the above OTT releases yet, but with the rising cases in Kerala, which has caused the subsequent restriction from the State Government, which is slowly forcing the shutdown of theatres and movie removals from cinemas – film producers have no other option but to release their products on OTTs (Just a matter of time at this point). For more up to date information regarding the above, follow us on Twitter, or here, on our website.