Disney Plus Hotstar’s new show ‘Kamathipura‘ seems to have indirectly become the first casualty of the new I&B Ministry guidelines for the OTT space. In keeping with several points of the guidelines, Disney Plus Hotstar has indefinitely postponed the release of Kamathipura, its distinctly dark and hard-hitting show that was to release today.
The guidelines for what goes and what doesn’t for OTT platforms were released a couple of weeks ago by the Information and Broadcasting Ministry. Most significant in the guidelines is the special emphasis on self-regulation and self-censorship. In essence, the government is averse to interfering in OTT programming, but has recommended that platforms take a good hard look at their content on their own, and filter out content that may cause religious disharmony or hurt people’s sentiments.
Disney Plus Hotstar has always been a vigilant, responsible streaming platform, and has been self-censoring its content long before there was any talk of censorship in digital entertainment. In light of the above, and given the fact that Kamathipura is full of strong, expletives-laden language, crude violence and disturbing scenes, Disney Plus Hotstar has swung into action to remedy the situation before it gets out of hand. It has postponed the release of Kamathipura, and will sanitise it appropriately so that it can be released and watched without unwanted hitches or raucous calls for a ban on it.
Yet, while Disney Plus Hotstar has acted in good faith and launched pa clean-up operation on the show, it is a major setback for the creative freedom enjoyed by content creators on OTT. Granted, some filmmakers took advantage of the lack of censorship to produce questionable content; but the erroneous ways of a few have led to a situation where every content creator and streaming platform will think twice before creating content that pushes the envelope and storms new bastions in storytelling.
Indeed a sad day and unfortunate development for the world of OTT entertainment.
Kamathipura stars Meera Chopra, Tanuj Virwani, Anang Desai and Varun Joshi, and is directed by Shravankumar Trivedi. It is a murder mystery set in the backdrop of Kamathipura, the largest red light area in Mumbai.
Here’s Meera Chopra’s Twitter post, informing viewers of the release postponement of Disney Plus Hotstar’s Kamathipura –
New update on the Release of #kamathipura. @DisneyPlusHS #tanujvirwani pic.twitter.com/T9GgLwDnHB
— Meera Chopra (@MeerraChopra) March 8, 2021
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