Netflix to stream Malayalam film ‘Padmini’
American streaming platform Netflix will premiere Malayalam film Padmini starting 11 August. The film features Kunchacko Boban, Madonna Sebastian, Aparna Balamurali, and Vincy Aloshious in lead roles. Video streaming platforms are likely to offer 50-60% of the budgets to southern language content, with these programmes seeing much traction, accounting for 30% of OTT viewership, said industry experts.
Films like RRR, Beast, and Jana Gana Mana were big hits on Netflix last year, and Amazon Prime Video saw high interest for its Tamil original Suzhal. Producers and executives also said the other advantage is southern originals are easy to put together as talent costs are not as high as Hindi content. It is estimated that 50% of overall subscription growth in 2022 came from the five markets down south.
RRR (on ZEE5, Netflix and Disney+ Hotstar), Karthikeya 2, Valimai and Bimbisara were watched the most and thrillers such as Vilangu and Recce have been well received along with comedies like Aha Naa Pellanta as well as Hello World. RRR, in fact, was the most popular film from India on Netflix globally. Within its first four weeks on the service, the film was viewed for over 73 million hours across the world with more than two-thirds of viewing coming from outside India.
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