If you guys haven’t noticed, OTT companies are having a brilliant year – one of the few industries in the world that has done well thanks to the coronavirus pandemic. India has been one of the bigger markets targeted by the streaming giants such as Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and Disney+ Hotstar. But India is a country that has multiple booming regional film industries. And one of the non-Bollywood industries that has recently gotten international attention (especially thanks to OTT) is Kollywood – The Tamil Film Industry.
Kollywood has also pretty much taken over 2020’s Indian hit chart of this year. Because of the coronavirus, most production houses have decided to drop their big budget flicks later next year. Of course there can be an argument made in favour of Dil Bechara – which is a good movie, no doubt, but the Indian movie of the year will have to go to Soorarai Pottru (most likely).
Kollywood also released quite a lot of films on OTTs this year (compared to other South-Indian film industries), and the films that came out during the later part of the year – Putham Puthu Kaalai, Mookuthi Amman, Paava Kadhaigal, etc. – a lot of them have been bonafide hits (which cannot be said for the other Indian film industries). Even Kanulu Kanulanu Dochayante that came out earlier in the year was a good film. But the Tamil movie industry has been working with multiple OTTs – both international giants and smaller regional streaming platforms, for some time now (almost a couple of years), by bringing on up and coming talent.
Young Tamil film makers have been offered to take part in creating original content for these streaming platforms and they are able to get their stories out into the digital space. What’s more, due to the high demand for Tamil content from Tamil viewers – most of the well established and local OTTs have started creating UI/UX for Tamil viewers to make the OTT navigation easier.
The regional OTT space has still got a long way to go, but by following the Tamil film industry’s example, other regional movie industries and production houses will start to get recognition and eventually get offers to create good original content.