OTT in India: Between a rock and a hard place

livemint.com:

₹125-130 crore in the past year, a trend that has led to reduced opportunities for low-budget films or those with lacklustre box office performances. “All platforms have started looking at pricing differently, but it is the mid-level titles that will suffer. That is why for the overall health of the industry, the dependence on theatrical revenues has to return," said Shariq Patel, chief business officer, Zee Studios.

The company is making an effort to this end by releasing small-budget films in cinemas, as it did with the recent Manoj Bajpayee-starrer Joram, which would have presumably gone directly to OTT otherwise. However, while Joram still has the backing of Zee, a corporate, there are about 200 Tamil and Malayalam films alone that have no takers at the moment, as platforms have veered towards big star and action films that assure returns. According to a recent report by Ormax, hit movies such as Jawan, Gadar 2 and OMG 2, starring A-listers, have done better on OTT platforms compared to web originals.

Between April and November 2023, only 11 web originals managed a buzz above 20% (a measure of the proportion of the audience that could recall a film or show without being prompted, when asked to recall recently-launched OTT titles). In contrast, as many as 23 theatrical films achieved this level of recall. This is definitely a time for caution, said Siddharth Anand Kumar, senior vice president of films and events at Saregama India Ltd, which owns boutique studio Yoodlee Films.