It has been almost 20 days since Kerala started re-establishing “Containment Zones” throughout the state. It has been almost 15 days since night shows/ second shows got cancelled. And it has been almost 10 days since the theatrical release date for Mohanlal‘s ‘Marakkar: Lion of the Arabian Sea‘ got postponed by another 3 months. With the second wave of Covid-19 cases hitting the South-Indian state like a truck, it looks like there will be even more “Containment Zones” popping up around the state soon. With this, it is almost guaranteed that we could be facing another lockdown, starting from May. And that is not good news for theatres.
Kerala was one of the last states to lift/ reduce the pandemic restrictions, with theatre opening allowed by the Chief Minister, only by the first week of January 2021, 3 months from when the Central Government had allowed it. And by the first week of March, night shows were allowed by the State Government. So with four months, theatre owners managed to grab some profits thanks to hit films like ‘Master’, and ‘The Priest’, with the second shows helping with the income (A huge chunk of the profits are made through these second shows). It hasn’t however, been enough to counter the 8 months of losses these theatres took in during the lockdown.
With many major films changing their release dates, postponing it by several months, or even indefinitely – many major theatres and cinema chains are planning to shut down shop till this crisis dies down. And with ‘Drishyam 2‘ and now ‘Joji‘ proving that direct to OTT release can generate crowd interest and can make the films popular, we will not be surprised if many big-budget movies shift their focus from theatrical release to an OTT one.
As of now, there hasn’t been any official news on a state-wide lockdown yet, but with “Containment Zones” coming up in populated cities like Kochi and Trivandrum – so it looks like a lockdown could happen at any point in time. For now, we will just have to wait and see.
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