This One Film Destroyed OTT Market
But the industry is back to square one when Kabzaa, which stars upendra and Sudeepa, was released in 2023. Due to the negative reviews, viewers around india lost a great deal of faith in the movie, which made OTT platforms shy away from releasing kannada movies. Hadinelentu/Seventeeners, a potential kannada film, was just uploaded on YouTube due to lack of interest from OTT platforms.
This points to a concerning trend: because of the industry's weakened negotiating position, kannada films struggle to attract an audience even with their excellent content. Recently, Rishab Shetty expressed his anger, saying that because of the failure of one commercial disaster, Kabzaa, OTT platforms are now reluctant to invest in kannada films. He voiced concerns about the industry's limited availability of these platforms, emphasizing that one bad film shouldn't determine the market for the whole motion picture business. Kabzaa's failure has had a huge knock-on impact, overshadowing the goodwill gained by previous hits such as kgf and Kantara.