With the lockdown of the southern state of Kerala being extended till May 31st 2021, we will be looking at month of closed theatres and cinemas halls as 27th May 2021 rolls around (in three days). It has been a trying time for the state and the people in it, with theatre and cinema hall owners taking some of the biggest losses they have experienced since the coronavirus pandemic first started. With no end in sight currently, we could be looking at many major OTT releases in the future.
And the prime candidates for this shift (from theatrical release to direct-to-OTT release) are expected to be The Nivin Pauly historical thriller, ‘Thuramukham’ and the Fahadh Faasil period epic ‘Malik’. Mohanlal’s historical war drama ‘Marakkar: Lion of The Arabian Sea’ already had its released date shifted from Eid (13th May 2021) to September 2021, with the film producer thinking about a simultaneous OTT and theatrical release at the same time.
This could be situation faced by all the big-budget films. Even with International OTTs such as Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and Disney+ Hotstar coming for these high-profile movies, most of them will not fully cover the cost of the movie production. So, to garner some profits as well, these films are released in theatres simultaneously, which will appeal to the non-streaming crowd/ theatre-loving (theatre-missing) crowd, which is the majority of the country (at the moment).
This situation is even worse for small to medium budget movies, where profits from regional OTTs are almost non-existent (the bigger OTTs usually ignore the smaller scale films). With theatres remaining close, the livelihoods of multiple are involved in this situation, and the absence of cinema halls will make it difficult to introduce a new actor for the main screen.
We know the lockdown is expected to be lifted by May 31st 2021. We will provide more update on the same once we get more information.