In the pan-Indian streaming business, the most valuable/ most watched South Indian content comes from the Telugu film industry and the Tamil film industry. Well, it looks like there is now a third player in town, to fill in your South Indian film needs – The Malayalam film industry. Now granted, most of these film industries wouldn’t have gained pan-Indian (global, in some cases) OTT attention if it wasn’t for the Covid-19 pandemic, especially the Malayalam movie industry, but they have adapted and released hits like CU Soon and Maniyarayile Ashokan.
But the recent release of Drishyam 2 has shown the influence of OTT giants such as Amazon Prime Video, and now other streaming biggies such as Netflix and Disney+ Hotstar are trying to copy Amazon Prime Video’s digital success by targeting Malayalam movies featuring superstars and streaming them directly to their platforms. The chances of Netflix and Disney+ Hotstar succeeding on that front is very slim, as the entire Malayalam film industry is trying to help out theater owners and distributors, but creating original projects with these story tellers would still be a very viable option to try.
With films like Vaanku and The Great Indian Kitchen, which apparently fell through the cracks of both Amazon Prime Video and Netflix and ended up in a regional OTT, having become huge critical successes; these OTT giants will probably make their selection process more thorough. Especially since there are loads more small to medium budget films which either have good stories and/or superstar actors/ directors; these OTTs are not willing to let another The Great Indian Kitchen slip past them again.
After the success of Jeethu Joseph’s Drishyam, most of these streaming platforms are planning on creating original content with the writer-director on board. We won’t be surprised if they try to bring on megastar Mohanlal either. For now we will just have to wait and see. But one thing is clear, the Covid-19 pandemic has changed the rules of film and TV entertainment – and the Malayalam film industry is adapting well.
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