The month when love takes over everything with valentines week, Zee5 came up with only a few films, including some licensed ones and a direct-to-ott release. On the series front Zee5 had nothing exciting to entertain its subscribers this February.
Taking it up chronologically, first up was a Bengali thriller web series ‘Roktokorobi’ starring Raima Sen. Though the series got decent reviews it could not attract many viewers. Then there was Malayalam crime thriller film ‘Veekam’ which was a total dud.
Next up was Revathi’s slice-of-life drama ‘Salaam Venky’ starring Kajol and Vishal Jethwa in lead roles. The film touched many hearts and people loved it for the inspirational storyline and great performance by the cast. Unfortunately the numbers were not that great for the film on OTT. On the same day Zee5 also premiered popular Kannada action drama ‘Vedha’ which achieved the milestone of 100+ million streaming minutes.
Then came festival favourite direct-to-OTT release Yami Gautam starrer ‘Lost’ and as expected the film brought in good numbers for Zee5. Within a few days of its premiere this one too crossed 100+ million watch minutes mark and was at #1 on Zee5’s trending list.
There was also Vishal’s action techno-thriller film ‘Chakra’ that came out on Zee5 a year after its theatrical release and could not attract viewers, infact the streamer did not take much interest in it itself. But it’s the next title that gained a lot of attention. It was the Marathi dark-comedy thriller ‘Vaalvi’ that got amazing reviews from critics. The film was well received by the viewers as well.
The only other web series that premiered on Zee5 was Telugu mystery crime-thriller ‘Pulimeka’. Despite high expectations this one could not impress much and received mixed reviews from both audience and critics.
Overall, other than ‘Lost’ and ‘Vedha’ in terms of numbers; and ‘Salaam Venky’ and ‘Vaalvi’ in terms of critic response, Zee5 failed to make any impact. Even the above mentioned numbers or reviews weren’t that impressive or overarching so as to compensate for everything else. All in all, February was a very underwhelming month for Zee5.