Karan Johar and Dharma Productions deliver 4th straight OTT success with 'Gehraiyaan'

With 'Gehraiyaan', Karan Johar can now boast of four straight OTT success in just 18 months. His earlier hits are 'Gunjan Saxena: The Kargil Girl' [2020], 'Shershaah' [2021] and 'Meenakshi Sundareshwar' [2021]. (File image)

While it stays on to be amongst the top production houses when it comes to giving theatrical biggies, Dharma Productions is now making it big on a constant basis on the small screen as well. With Gehraiyaan, Karan Johar can now boast of four straight OTT success in just 18 months.

His earlier hits are Gunjan Saxena: The Kargil Girl [2020], Shershaah [2021] and Meenakshi Sundareshwar [2021]. While the first two in the list were always meant for theatrical release and had to choose the OTT route due to the pandemic, the third was designed as an OTT original. What further makes it exciting is the fact that these four films is truly different from each other and have been critically appreciated as well as commercially successful.

The recent release Gehraiyaan has turned out to be a major release for Amazon Prime Video. The film has been streaming at No. 1 ever since release, and is finding audiences not just in India but also overseas and amongst the non-Hindi speaking audience. This may be because of the film's international look, feel and treatment, courtesy director Shakun Batra.

That Gehraiyaan goes beyond the theme of infidelity and takes a dramatic thriller route, has meant better traction for it with every passing day right through the weekend. While the initial impression is positive, it remains to be seen what kind of distance the film - starring Deepika Padukone, Siddhanth Chaturvedi, Ananya Panday and Dhairya Karwa - manages to cover in weeks from here.

Shershaah too had started strong, and gone from strength to strength to emerge as the biggest OTT success of 2021. The Sidharth Malhotra starrer had made a huge impression when it released around Independence Day, and such was the amalgamation of patriotism and romance in this biopic of Major Vikram Batra that the word of mouth continued to make it cover a much larger distance. Chartbuster music further helped the cause, hence being in line with the kind of expectations that one has from Dharma Productions.

Prior to that, Janhvi Kapoor's Gunjan Saxena: The Kargil Girl had released on Netflix in 2020. That too was based on the Indo-Pak war but the focus was more on the journey of a girl who went on to make it big in Air Force and not as much about the way she took on the enemy in the war.

Netflix has an ongoing association with Karan Johar, and Dharma Productions and its wing Dharmatic Entertainment. It is via the latter that Meenakshi Sundareshwar was made for straight-to-digital release. A love story about a couple trying to make their long distance relationship work, it was a clean family entertainer where Sanya Malhotra rocked the show with her sweet act. Her co-star in the film, Abhimanyu Dasani, benefitted from the film's success as well. As for Netflix, the film was one of the shining spots for them amongst multiple releases.

Karan Johar's next offering on Netflix, The Fame Game, earlier titled Finding Anamika, stars Madhuri Dixit. The web series, backed by Dharmatic Entertainment, had been looking for the right time to arrive, and now that it's releasing on February 25, there is curiosity around it.

The biggest reason for that, of course, is the digital debut of Madhuri Dixit. The reigning star of the late '80s and then right through the '90s, the actress is the central protagonist in this mystery drama.

With things looking better and brighter in 2022, one now waits to see what does Karan Johar bring on OTT next.

Gunjan Saxena: The Kargil Girl (2020)

Shershaah (2021)

Meenakshi Sundareshwar (2021)

Gehraiyaan (2022)

The Fame Game (2022)