When Covid-19 cases decrease, lockdown restrictions are relaxed. When the number of cases increases, the lockdown restrictions come back, with full force. This back-and-forth swing in restrictions is not something new, in multiple Indian states – and it is certainly not new in Kerala. With the number of coronavirus’ second wave cases rising again and the State Government preparing for triple lockdown restrictions across the region, theatre owners, workers and distributors continue to suffer.
During this two month semi-lockdown period in Kerala, many of the “big hitters” (AKA crowd-pulling films) managed to get an OTT release on multiple OTT platforms. Films like ‘Nizhal’, ‘Nayattu’, ‘Operation Java’ among others are all streaming on various streaming platforms, with (many of) the film owners happy to make this easy switch. Even upcoming Anto Joseph theatrical releases ‘Malik‘ and ‘Cold Case‘ will be premiering directly onto an OTT platform as well.
The situation in Kerala was getting better in the past few weeks, with the State Government relaxing the triple lockdown measure that had been placed, a couple of weeks ago. Now, however, there seems to be a huge number of cases suddenly popping up in some parts of the state; to combat this issue, the regional Government is planning to set up restrictions around these specific parts.
With all of these things happening, the chances that theatres will open in the month of July is steadily declining. We had mentioned earlier, in one of our previous articles, that theatres will not start up by August, but the recent changes had made us hopeful for the theatres’ owners and workers. It seems to have been a semi “false alarm”, and theatres will continue to incur losses as this second wave of coronavirus continues. With all this uncertainty, we are looking at a possible “non-theatre”-August as well. It will all depend on when the “second wave cases” start to subside.