Easy OTT Money Is Over - What Next?

Rope in a big star, and if his remuneration was ₹10 crores earlier, pay him ₹30 crores now, make a film with a total of ₹100 crores, and sell it off to an OTT platform for ₹100 crores. That’s how things have worked for almost a decade now.

Producers made huge money in that process, as whatever comes from theatrical revenue, satellite and remake rights is a big profit. That’s how the remunerations and production costs of movies increased too. But those happy hours are over now.

In recent times, films that featured big stars haven’t received amazing viewership on the OTT platforms. And some films that are blockbusters in theatres are not getting views on digital streaming. Okay, films that flopped in theatres used to get good numbers on OTT apps, but that’s also not happening.

Other than the original OTT content, these movies churned out by the film industries in Bollywood and Tollywood are no longer the crowd pullers, number makers and new subscriber acquirers for these digital platforms. That made them rethink their acquisition strategies, and films of stars that used to get a ₹100 crore upfront offer are not even getting half of that. Forget about medium- and small-budgeted movies.

Either our producers need to make films with big stars on a budget of under 30-40 crores, and get that from OTTs and then release their film in theatres to make the profits. Also, probably remunerations should come down by almost 50%, and only then will it help the producers.

Anyway, easy OTT money is over now, so producers should figure out what’s next.