When the era of OTT started after the COVID restrictions, then they made a deal. After 28 days, the films would land straight on the OTT platform. As a result, most people stopped going to the big screens and they waited for the film on OTT. But it was leading to mammoth losses in the big screen business. As a result, Bollywood made 8 weeks a compulsory gap for films to arrive on OTT.
Meanwhile, all four prominent film industries in the South stuck to the usual 4-week window.
But all these systems were established in 2022.
Now, it can easily be seen crashing. With OTT platforms downright rejecting films, the deal has been unofficially revised.
The platforms and producers are getting more comfortable in the flexible OTT deals with them. It means that OTT platforms are not getting many rigid deals and things depend on the box office collection of the films.
Even movies like Marco, which are big hits, are opting for no OTT deal as long as the film is on the big screens. This is suitable for films with big collection in their name but quite obviously it badly hampers those films that fail to rake in big numbers.
Another example is Kanguva. It was to be released much late on OTT but the disaster response made it available on Prime Video much earlier.
Let’s wait to see the next trend.