Will coronavirus lockdown result in a surge of straight-to-OTT releases for Bollywood?

Q. Netflix employs people called by a specific name whio are part-time employees who get paid to sit at home, watch TV shows and movies on the streaming service. What name do they carry?

Now that it has been established that the coronavirus threat is for real and lockdown is the newest word to have made it to everyday usage, Bollywood has already been pushed back by a couple of months.

With releases stalled, shootings coming to a standstill and no guesswork being useful either on when would normalcy resume, release plans of quite a few films would need a lot of shuffling around before they can eventually make it to theaters.

Though for big films it would be just a matter of time before they lay their hands on the next big holiday slot that is made available, it would be smaller films that would need to find some sort of elbow space at least to find a respectable release.

After all, four Fridays have already been lost and by the look of things, at least eight more Fridays would need to be sacrificed by Bollywood before theaters start opening again. This means in total 12 Fridays at the bare minimum would have been lost, and in turn, an opportunity to arrive for a minimum of 24 films.

Here we are talking about a couple of films per week which belong to the respectable category, which means they boast of some sort of credentials (known actor, producer, director or studio) at least. In fact, if one adds at least 2-3 other inconsequential films that invariably arrive every week, the count would be even bigger. However, one can choose to ignore these for the time being since these films don't quite manage to make it to the OTT platform either.

There is a catch though, as majority of films have a clause where these need to have a theatrical release first before arriving on the digital platform. Recently, we saw the release of Rajkummar Rao, Rakul Preet Singh and Hema Malini's Shimla Mirchi seeing a token release before making it to Netflix.

On the flipside, Karan Johar's Drive managed to evade that as the Sushant Singh Rajput and Jacqueline Fernadez action thriller saw straight-to-Netflix release. Ditto for Emraan Hashmi's Tigers that came straight to ZEE5.

At one point in time, it had also seemed that Fox Star Studios' Dil Bechara and Lootcase would arrive straight on Hotstar. However, that didn't quite happen and both films were planned for theatrical release in first half of 2020. One waits to see if that happens. Even Saif Ali Khan's Kaalakaandi was in consideration for Netflix release but then the actor was clearly not assumed and the film first released in theaters.

Coming to the films that choose to stick by their decision of theatrical release, it would be a tough choice to make in the times to come. After all, bigger films would still find the best of the Fridays in time to come and hence the smaller ones would need to make a choice out of the two available options - a) either arrive amidst a crowd and see a token release with restricted count of screens or b) wait to release in 2021.

It would be a counter-productive situation though in both the scenarios, and lose-lose one at that. Arriving in a crowd means missing out on major screens and prime shows, which means box office returns would be measly. On the other hand delay to 2021 would end up piling interest with no real guarantee of what sort of release would they eventually gain even a year down the line. This is when these films could also considering opting for straight-to-OTT release.

After all, Netflix, Amazon, Hotstar and ZEE 5 are known for accommodating such films and give them a respectable release. They may just be happy to do so in time to come as well.