The Hindi version of Ponniyin Selvan 1 is now available to watch on rent on Amazon Prime Video. It seems that the platform does not care about what the audience actually needs from it. The Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Malayalam version also received backlash from audiences when they were made available for rent.
The North Indian Theatre Association had decided in July that every film should be given a window of eight weeks before its OTT premiere, because South Indian films were only given a four week window which was bad for the business of the theaters.
Counting the weeks from the theatrical release of PS1 on 30 Sept, we can easily assume that the movie will be available to watch on Amazon Prime Video during early December. And it makes no sense of making the movie available for rent prior to the OTT premiere.
Amazon Prime Video does not bother to understand what audiences want and what can enrage the users. The movie was available for 199 rupees in Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Kannada. Despite having such negative reactions on these four versions, Prime Video’s decision to rent it in Hindi too makes it very visible that there is not much importance given to those reactions. The movie is no longer running in the theaters, and soon the 8 weeks window will be over and anyone with a subscription can watch the movie on Amazon Prime for free. At this point of time, renting out the movie is a bad decision indeed. The platform should learn to run its business with more seriousness and should start paying heed to what users want and what they don’t.