One of the most surprising box office successes this year has to be the horror film ‘Smile’. The movie made on a small budget of $17M ended up grossing over $210M at the worldwide box office, ending up as a blockbuster. The movie is finally getting released in India on November 18th, but it may have been too late.
Why? Because as per reports, the movie will debut on digital today, i.e on November 15th, on Paramount+. You get where I’m going, don’t you? After the movie gets released on digital platforms, its high-quality file becomes available for download via torrents within minutes, severely affecting the box office potential of movies. And in a cost-sensitive market like India, the effect can be huge. Hence the movie should ideally have had a much earlier release in India.
That being said, it certainly doesn’t mean the movie will have dismal collections either, since, above everything else, it’s a horror movie, a genre best experienced on the big screen. Besides, the genre seems to be doing fairly well as well, compared to the other genre films in the pandemic. So to you, all horror lovers out there, don’t miss this film in theatres. The experience will be worth it, and digital won’t justify the same to you.
The movie, originally released in the US on September 30th, was interestingly made for Paramount’s OTT platform Paramount+ as a direct digital release. It is a usual practice of studios to give test screenings of the films to a selected audience, to understand the responses and to see if the movie is engaging to their target audience. In this case, after ‘Smile’ received overwhelmingly positive responses after its test screenings, the studio decided to release the film in theatres. And what a right decision it was, with the movie becoming a box office haul for the studio. With inventive marketing strategies and good content, the movie was a winner on all fronts.
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