OTT Movies Decision - What is Tollywood thinking?
Rajamouli's observations suggest that this is unrelated to OTT. It's just that today's movies aren't interesting enough to draw audiences to theatres. You cannot blame OTT for a movie's failure to draw audiences on Day One, the opening weekend, or any other day. Instead of the current four-week lag, a movie would be released on OTT eight weeks after its theatrical debut. If the exhibition sector is advocating it, they appear to have forgotten that, during the Covid-19 tapering phase, Western cinemas were even willing to release movies concurrently with OTT platforms, or vice versa.
If a movie is released in theatres and receives publicity and general public knowledge as a result, the objective of OTT platforms is served. A delay of eight weeks hardly matters to them. Do the directors want it that way, too, to finish? In my opinion, no. They stopped producing movies that could be seen for eight weeks in theatres. The rights are encumbered sooner when a film is committed to and transferred to an OTT platform.
Even in the 1980s, when video piracy posed a serious threat to the box office, movies nonetheless performed admirably in theatres and commemorated milestones. The movie provided what the audience desired, which was the main factor. In fact, consumers would frequently wish to watch a stolen video on a larger screen after watching it. And to top it all off, the friday big-screen releases of the flicks coincided with the distribution of the illegal video copies.