From ‘The Great Indian Kitchen’ to ‘Minnal Murali’, the South Indian film industry seems to have dabbled in pretty much every genre this year – comedies, thrillers, action flicks, drama, etc; and have hit home runs. While the theatres of Kerala were only open for around 5 months this year, it hasn’t stopped the rise in popularity of Malayalam cinema – particularly at the National level; thanks to OTT platforms. And while other film industries have released some good features this year; no other film industry has been consistently releasing hits month after month (sometimes even week after week) as much as Mollywood.
As we mentioned earlier, ‘The Great Indian Kitchen’ was released on a relatively unknown platform at the time, Neestream, on January 15th 2021. At the time of release, the film was well known for its rejection by both Netflix and Amazon Prime Video. Unfortunately for the two OTT conglomerates, this Malayalam drama took off and gained Nationwide attention. The movie also showed that Mollywood is a brilliant market for OTT platforms as well. A few days later, theatres opened up in Kerala. However, that didn’t stop the highly anticipated thriller sequel, ‘Drishyam 2’, to release on Amazon Prime Video. This movie also did really well and has managed to make it on IMDb’s top 10 best Indian films list.
Like it was mentioned above, theatres reopened and films like ‘Vellam’, ‘Operation Java’, ‘The Priest’, ‘Varthamanam’, ‘Kala’, ‘Biriyaani’, ‘Aarkkariyam’, ‘Nayattu’ and ‘Chathur Mukham’ were all received well, by both critics and filmgoers. However, Keralites were not ready to go back to cinema halls at the time and as April ended, the second wave of the coronavirus caused a second lockdown within the state. Most of the aforementioned films went to an OTT platform and many of them quickly started setting records as some of the most-watched Malayalam movies on an OTT platform.
Malayalam stars Fahadh Faasil and Prithviraj made a name for themselves with some brilliant OTT releases this year – ‘Joji’, ‘Malik’, ‘Kuruthi’ and ‘Bhramam’. A few small budget Malayalam films also became popular due to their OTT release – ‘#Home’, ‘Kaanekkaane’ and ‘Thinkalazhcha Nishchayam’. By the time November came, theatres opened again. And Dulquer Salmaan‘s ‘Kurup’ took full advantage. ‘Kaaval’ and ‘Muddy’ has done well in theatres as well. And now, the latest direct-to-OTT released Malayalam film, ‘Minnal Murali’, has become a global phenomenon – trending 4th on Netflix’s global Top 10 list. This has truly been a brilliant year for Malayalam cinema.