A few days ago Mohanlal led Malayalam blockbuster crime thriller drama ‘Thudarum’ released on Jio Hotstar and was expected to woo the audience on OTT as well. But it did not exactly happen like that.
‘Thudarum’ did exceptionally well at the box office becoming the third highest grossing Malayalam film and the fourth highest grossing Indian film of 2025. Mohanlal’s star power played a major role in pulling audience to the theatres aided by good word-of-mouth from the public and critical appreciation. But when it comes to OTT, the lens through which a film is seen changes quite a bit.
Here the star power plays a very minimal role and in order to impress people it’s the story that has to be extraordinary. As for ‘Thudarum’, while the film’s suspense factor worked well on the big screen, it was predictable and a bit lengthy for the digital audience who find it a little overrated but yet a decent one time watch.
That pops the question: Are some movies just good enough for the big screen? And if good enough seems too extreme they are at least better suited for theatres. This stands true for some films specially those led by A-list stars with massive fan followings.
That’s because such films are more hero centric and glorify them as invincible often resulting in loss of authenticity and credibility in the storyline that drives the viewership on OTTs where the audience is always on the lookout for, real, raw, relatable and more diverse and convoluted plotlines with multiple character arcs to make it more interesting.
So yeah not everything that works well in theatres is going to replicate the same success model on OTT as well and ‘Thudarum’ here is a textbook example of the same. While it might draw curious viewers who haven’t seen the film in cinemas and might come in looking for what exactly the hype is all about, they might not end up liking it the same way as the theatre going audience did.
Therefore if the metrics to evaluate a theatrically successful film’s accomplishment on OTT is just viewership data and not the qualitative analysis, films like ‘Thudarum’ are still going to emerge victorious. But is that the right and only way to judge a licensed film’s performance on OTT?