The much-anticipated, violent Malayalam thriller ‘Kala‘ which was released on Amazon Prime Video yesterday, on 20th May 2021, has been removed from the OTT giant’s Indian and (multiple) International libraries. Due to the film’s impressive violence and raunchy sex scenes, we speculated that the film was removed because of its adult rating for a regional feature film. But that does not seem to be the case this time, as there seems to be a conflict of interest for the streaming rights of the film between Amazon Prime Video and a smaller mobile OTT platform, Saina Play.
Multiple media platforms announced the release of Tovino Thomas’ ‘Kala’ on both Saina Play and Amazon Prime Video, a couple of days ago. Similar to the multi-OTT release of the Malayalam family drama ‘Aarkkariyam’, many figured that both OTT platforms managed to secure the streaming rights for the film. However that does not seem to be the case, with Amazon Prime Video having pulled ‘Kala’ from its libraries, while the movie is still running on Saina Play.
Like any other hit Malayalam movies running in theatres at the time (‘Nayattu’, ‘Nizhal’, etc.), ‘Kala’ too took the OTT route after the Kerala State Government set a State-wide lockdown for three weeks. So under the circumstances, the film’s switch from theatre viewing to streaming is understandable. But now, the Malayalam psychological thriller cannot be viewed on one of the biggest OTTs in India. Social media has already taken notice and many have already slowly started buzzing on Twitter. With the movie now removed from Amazon Prime Video’s Indian, American, Australian and New Zealander libraries, we expect the buzzing to become a full-blown roar soon.
‘Kala’ is available for streaming on Saina Play. For more follow-up information, check us out on Twitter or here, on our website.