The Greatest of All Time (GOAT) was releaGOATsed about a month ago worldwide as one of the last films of Thalapathy Vijay before his full-time career as a politician. The film was made with a huge budget of about 340 crores and was packed with action and thrill. The film also had an edge with Vijay playing double roles which multiplied the star’s impact on the screen. It was expected to be a big film that would have broken records, but after the release, the results of the movie were not impressive.
The film’s biggest shock came in the form that the National Cinema Chains like PVR-INOX refused to screen the movie on their screens. This was done supposedly because the Southern films have started releasing their films way too early on OTT platforms. This hampers the potential revenue of the theatres through the shows. In contrast, Bollywood has a strict policy of not releasing a film on OTT platforms until 8 weeks after its release. In a film like GOAT, the distribution rights themselves are expensive and if the film is released to OTT very soon, the profit for the distributors will be very low.
This speculation turned true indeed for GOAT as it has not yet been a month since the film was released theatrically and now it has been released on Netflix in Hindi audio. The National theatres did a good job in avoiding releasing the film in Northern regions as it would certainly have impacted their earnings which already is dipping down for the financial year of 2024-25.
The film was released in many local theatres in the Northern belt, which did boost their income as people had to go there in order to enjoy the film. But the collection for the film in the North was very low compared to the star power of Vijay and the film’s marketing. The audience preferred watching other films in National theatres than watching GOAT. Even the audience retention rate for the film was quite low.
Ultimately, due to bad strategy and over-hyping, the film suffered in the box office, and as it was no longer relevant (especially after Vettaiyan coming out on 10th), the makers soon released the film on Netflix.