Tamil movie Aelay was all set to release on 12th February 2021 in theatres, but in a recent development it seems that the movie has postponed it’s release date to another week. Also the producers of the movie got into a huge tussle with the theatre owners over the matter of short OTT window for their movie.
Since several of the movies were pushed onto the backburner due to COVID-19, the makers of these movies decided to wait for the theatres to reopen for a year. But over the course of time, they started to incur losses. And to counteract this, the makers of Aelay have demanded a short OTT window, meaning that the movie will be releasing on theatres first and then after a quick run in theatres, they are eyeing for the OTT release.
Naturally this idea was opposed by the theatre owners, who too like the filmmakers suffered heavy losses in the pandemic. The theatre owners have made it very clear that the each and every movie should run in theatres for at least 30 days before arriving on any OTT platforms. And it seems that the makers of Aelay aren’t too keen on supporting the same ideology.
And hence in protest, the Tamil Film Active Producers Association have signed a press release on behalf of every film producer that theatres are not understanding the amount of hardwork and money which has been dedicated for the movie and it has already incurred losses. With the early release on OTT platform, they’ll at least cover their losses.
According to the producers, OTT platforms came as a savior for the movies which were stuck to get a release date mid pandemic and when the producers of several movies started releasing their movies on 14-16th day on OTT it came as a blessing. But now the Theatres are asking for a 30 day window which the producers are not accepting.
Also the fact that the Aelay which was scheduled to arrive on theatres on 12th February has pulled out of its release date. Yes you read that correctly, Halitha Shameem’s feel-good drama Aelay featuring Samuthirakani and Manikandan have decided to push the release by a week in order to get a good amount of screens. This is due to the fact that 4 movies were clashing on the same day.
It will be interesting to see how the situation pans out because the decision will be applicable for future movies which are all set to arrive in the coming weeks.