Producers of small films split streaming rights to maximise revenue, ease acquisition costs for OTT platforms

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Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. Small southern films such asMartin andNaradan are now streaming on more than one platform, often in the same language, as producers look to maximise revenue and OTT players balk at paying high prices to acquire movies or retain exclusive rights of small and mid-budget movies. “It is a chance for a producer to unlock greater aggregated value across multiple platforms rather than have it stream exclusively on one service," producer Tanuj Garg said.

He added that smaller films can pretty much come for throwaway prices for one platform and that both OTT players as well as filmmakers are trying out different business models in the interest of monetisation. Independent trade analyst Sreedhar Pillai said several of these films, especially the small and mid-budget ones, are bought by platforms on revenue-sharing terms and for a limited duration. Many such deals are struck only after the film has released in theatres and has crossed a certain box office threshold.

“Some of the services striking these deals are regional language players and can’t offer huge amounts, but the acquisition helps bolster its library. For the bigger, foreign platform, it doesn’t matter if the film is streaming non-exclusively. They even look to rent titles out to smaller players themselves after a certain period of time," Pillai explained.