Three major Malayalam theatrical releases, ‘Kurup‘, ‘Marakkar: Lion of The Arabian Sea’ and ‘Kaaval‘ are heading towards various OTT platforms for streaming this month. All three Malayalam features have had varying degrees of success on the silver screen and have managed to help in the “process of loss recovery” for theatres in Kerala. While an early OTT release is not good for cinemas, luckily they have more than an ample amount of projects to fall back on – with big-budget Malayalam features waiting in the wings; many among them waiting since 2020.
‘Kaaval’ was released in theatres in the last week of November, on November 25th 2021. The film did relatively well in theatres, making more than three times its initial production cost in the Kerala Box Office. While the film is still doing fairly okay, Netflix managed to nab the streaming rights of this movie and the Suresh Gopi starrer is expected to release on said OTT on 23rd December 2021.
The biggest movie among the aforementioned three, ‘Marakkar: Lion of the Arabian Sea’ is expected to stream on Amazon Prime Video in a few days, before the film even completes one month in theatres. While disappointing for the cast and crew of the film, it doesn’t come as a surprise after the reception the film has been receiving over the past few days. The movie will drop on Amazon Prime Video on December 17th 2021.
And finally, ‘Kurup’ – the most successful among the three. This Dulquer Salmaan starter was going to be a direct-to-OTT released feature film before the production company opted for a theatrical release. This worked and the film went on to make more than two and a half times its production budget. While there has been no official announcement yet, we expect this movie to drop on Netflix by this week, especially since another highly anticipated Malayalam feature drops on Netflix next month, ‘Minnal Murali’. So we expect ‘Kurup’ to drop on 17 December 2021 on Netflix.
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