Akshay Kumar’s ‘Raksha Bandhan‘ and Aamir Khan’s ‘Laal Singh Chaddha‘ released together on the 11th of August this year. Laal Singh Chaddha flopped badly in the theatres alongside Raksha Bandhan. Both the movies could not satisfy the audiences. But the promotions made by the OTT platforms that got the rights for the movies can make a difference in the viewership.
Raksha Bandhan has been promoted with some real effort to ensure success on OTT. Akshay Kumar has exclusively shot special videos for the promotion. There were tweets and posts to create a hype. The main focus is those who somehow missed to watch the movie during its theatre release should not miss it this time.
On the other hand, Laal Singh Chaddha was released suddenly on Netflix without any pre-existing notice, announcement or news. It is almost like they have accepted that the film is destined to fail, in all mediums.
After the streaming of both the films, there is a new discussion whether we were too quick to judge Laal Singh Chaddha as a bad film or not. Maybe the film deserved more than it got. And Netflix’s promotionless streaming did not even got enough time to create a hype so that at least ‘Laal Singh Chaddha’ does a decent business on OTT.
Netflix should learn to promote a film properly from Zee5. The way it has been able to create a buzz even after the utterly disappointing results in the box office is truly something to learn from.