Last Friday, Kareena Kapoor Khan led ‘The Buckingham Murders’ and Jr NTR starrer ‘Devara’ premiered on Netflix. And while the latter is receiving more love from India, the former is getting more global attention.
According to the statistics revealed by Netflix, ‘The Buckingham Murders’ ranks at #5 with 2.9 million views in the global top 10 non-English film list beating Devara, which is at #6 with 2.2 million views, on the same list. Also, Kriti Sanon and Kajol’s ‘Do Patti’ is in this list for third week now, and this time it is at #4 with 3.3 million views.
But the same is not true when the top 10 films list of Netflix India is considered . Here, the story is different, ‘Devara’ is at #1, followed by ‘Do Patti’ at #2 and ‘The Buckingham Murders’ at #3.
These above datas and rankings show the viewer preferences for Indian content within and outside India. ‘Devara’ has a more ethnic Indian theme and setting when compared to ‘The Buckingham Murders’ which is a modern day crime thriller film based in the United Kingdom. And hence the former is more appealing to Indian audience while the latter is being liked by people across the globe for its international setting.
Moreover, ‘Devara’ is a tentpole Indian film with much more anticipation within India than ‘The Buckingham Murders’ given a larger star power and higher budget attached to it. Ever since it started production there was huge expectations from it but the same cannot be said for ‘The Buckingham Murders’, which is not as mass centric as ‘Devara’.
So it’s quite understandable that larger Indian audience will prefer to watch ‘Devara’ first to find out what the hype is all about and maybe then go ahead to watch ‘The Buckingham Murders’ for it’s content driven plot.
As for ‘Do Patti’, despite being set in a hilly Indian town, the film’s genre and theme is more universal in nature. Moreover, it has been out for longer so word of mouth is also a factor for it ranking higher in the global top 10 list of non-English films on Netflix as compared to other aforementioned titles.