Like any other industry, entertainment too has its own share of established people and newcomers. It’s an obvious thing to exist and very normal until the former starts feeling insecure of the latter and something similar happened in case of theatres and OTTs, later resulting into some big revelations.
When the pandemic shut everything indefinitely, it sort of exposed a biased system where everyone in the entertainment world was running only behind money often compromising on the artform of cinema. The disregard for story and shifting of focus to cheap, predictable cinematic tricks, highlighting the protagonist, that pleased the masses has creeped into the Indian cinemas, both mainstream and regional, degrading the quality of it all.
The lockdown made people in the entertainment industry, especially certain filmmakers and their favourite ‘big’ stars, realise that they are relevant only until they are in limelight i.e. in front of the cameras and then on the big screen. But with that not happening the loss they felt was very much conspicuous.
Moreover, their apprehensions about going for a ‘lesser’ considered digital medium then became more of a necessity. And these OTT platforms became a testing ground for their work, where the audience viewed them with a more critical lense and things that used to work on big screens mostly failed terribly on the smaller ones. Only those who had a good story and executed it well got the praise from this new set of digital audience.
And now, the OTT platforms are on their way of shattering the entertainment Cabals and ‘star culture’ prevalent in the cinema industry. This faulted culture has had such widespread roots and for so long that in some way or the other everyone in the industry has contributed to it, either by staying silent and letting it happen or actively participating in it. But with OTTs coming into picture, questions have been raised whether it was even relevant.
The new gained popularity of OTTs has been a boon for many talented people out there, both old and new, who have constantly tried to breathe a new life in the beautiful art of cinema. What remains to be seen is will this reformation of the system continue or will it all spiral back, as and when normalcy starts to set in.