After the failed attempt of releasing Dulquer Salman‘s historical crime drama, ‘Kurup‘ in theatres back in May, the production company is now seriously looking to release the Malayalam thriller directly onto an OTT platform, as per latest reports. Apparently, Netflix has already bagged the streaming rights for the movie, so it should be easy for the streaming mogul to get the direct-to-OTT premiere rights as well. There hasn’t been any official announcement regarding both reports, but we expect it to happen soon, with theatres in Kerala expected to still be shut down for several weeks.
The theatrical release of ‘Kurup’ in May was postponed (for the “n’th” time) because of the sudden rise in coronavirus cases in Kerala due to the second Covid-19 wave. This eventually made the State government shut down all public spaces – including theatres (by April end) and by the first week of May, Kerala was under lockdown for 7 weeks. This seriously hampered the releases of Malayalam movies featuring superstars such as ‘Thuramukham’, ‘Marrakar: Lion of the Arabian Sea’, ‘Kurup’ and ‘Malik’ – the latter of which has been released directly for streaming on Amazon Prime Video.
And in these difficult times, we expect the production company to do what is best for the movie and get it out there for the film-watching community. So, while we are disappointed for Dulquer that the movie won’t release in theatres (which is looking to be the case as more and more days pass by), we are happy that this movie is finally going to release after the sneak peek teaser we got nearly a year ago. Also, when Netflix premieres ‘Kurup’, it will become the most expensive direct-to-OTT released Malayalam movie to date.
We are now awaiting the official announcement, which we think will be in the form of a new ‘Kurup’ trailer with a Netflix logo as a watermark. For now, let’s wait and see.