The Malayalam film fans and Mohanlal fans were (deservingly) delighted when they heard the announcement of Drishyam 2. Later, the OTT followers rejoiced, when they found out that the sequel to this 2013 family thriller will premiere directly on Amazon Prime Video; although many others were still apprehensive about the decision. And now it’s been almost 10 days since the movie dropped, and without a doubt – Drishyam 2 is a brilliant movie. With Mohanlal being one of the first megastar of South India to work in a project which was released directly to a streaming platform, is this finally the beginning of an OTT Revolution?
If there is one thing that the pandemic changed us, it was the way we went about our lives; how we take of ourselves, how we interact with others, how we work and how we entertain ourselves are a few of those mentionable big changes. And it is the last one which we will be addressing about today. Successful films like CU Soon, The Great Indian Kitchen, Mookuthi Amman and Putham Pudhu Kaalai among others, contained superstars such as Fahadh Faasil, Jayaram, Urvashi, Nayanthara and Suraj Venjaramoodu (to name a few), released directly on streaming platforms during the pandemic. But no Megastar actor was willing to put up their big budget blockbusters, directly to OTT.
Or that’s what we thought. Then Soorarai Pottru dropped on Amazon Prime Video on November 12th 2020 and after a month of running, many critics declared it the best Indian film of 2020. Now Surya is not as popular as Rajnikanth, Vijay, Ajith Kumar or Kamal Hassan, but the actor is a mega star of the Tamil Film Industry in his own right. And then a couple of months later, Thalapathy Vijay’s Master dropped on Amazon Prime Video, just 15 days after the movie dropped in theaters around the world. And as mentioned earlier, Mohanlal’s Drishyam 2 also dropped on Amazon Prime Video recently.
This proves that even Megastars can be part of OTT productions without them losing their “Mega Star” status. Of course, this means that there will be slight competition with theaters releasing projects, and competition is good for both platforms, as it keeps both parties in check. Hopefully with this, more Megastars will join Direct-to-OTT releasing projects and push “The Revolution” forward, which will in turn give us better movies from both theaters and OTTs alike.
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