2025 did not quite began with a bang for Zee5 which relied mostly on licensed content this January, quite contrary to last month of last year.
January started for Zee5 with the streaming of Dheeraj Sarna’s ‘The Sabarmati Report’. The film was a box office bomb and had mixed to negative reviews upon it’s theatrical release but since it was based on a controversial subject it did manage to bring in decent number of views for the streamer.
There was almost nothing new on Zee5 for next two weeks after ‘The Sabarmati Report’ and then in the last week came three titles.
There was Tamil drama ‘Thiru.Manickam’ which was once again underwhelming at the box office but according to Zee5 it is having a good streaming run.
The only Zee5 original this month was Hindi drama ‘Hisaab Barabar’ starring R. Madhavan which was meant to be promising but got very mediocre to bad reviews. It was criticised for weak execution, writing and more.
Lastly there was Malayalam thriller ‘Identity’ starring Ticino Thomas and Trisha that came up on Zee5 on the last day of January and while we cannot exactly talk about the viewership it pulled, the film despite having a moderate performance in theatres has the potential to attract audience on OTT given its starcast and plot line.
Overall, after a good effort on the original front in December last year Zee5 could not manage to keep it up this January. In fact none of the licensed films were very impactful either. Hopefully we see something better on Zee5 in February.