8-Week OTT: Producers Bleeding Badly!

The Theatre Owners’ Association’s meeting today is causing a stir in the Tamil film industry. They’re suggesting Tamil producers consider releasing movies on OTT platforms after an 8-week theatrical run.

The Association may enforce this 8-week gap and push for measures similar to Kerala’s planned strike. Bharathiraja, President of the Producers’ Association, is asking for reduced ticket fees for small-budget films, a key point in yesterday’s meeting.

In the Malayalam industry, such a sudden announcement has worsened tensions between producers and theatre owners over revenue sharing and release windows.

Tamil theaters have suffered as recent big releases failed to draw audiences. Films like Captain Miller, Ayalaan, Lal Salaam, and Siren have failed to set the cash registers ringing. After Leo, there has been not one film that has been liked by the audience to feed theaters.

Even if the above-mentioned films were released on OTT after 8 weeks, the theater business wouldn’t improve because the lack of engaging movies is the issue. Many producers are surviving because of deals with OTT platforms.

These agreements help them get back bigger chunk of the money they spent making the movie and again make movies. Since producers are having a tough time recovering their costs from the theatrical business due to poor content, they agree to release their movies on OTT platforms just 3-4 weeks after they hit theaters.

This way, they make more money through faster-release OTT deals. Making good and engaging films is the only solution for the Tamil film industry’s ecosystem to survive. It is easy to say, ‘Do not let OTT platforms stream soon,’ but OTTs do not pay higher amounts for late release windows.

The faster the release on OTT, the more money. Otherwise, producers will be bleeding in financial pain. M9 News