Until a year back, making a film was quite easy. Ready a film on a decent budget, sell the OTT rights in a safe zone, and enter the profit zone. This was the scene. When it comes to big films, OTT platforms were going all out to buy the rights of the biggies and this gave the producers a lot of ease to make films.
But in the last two months, the business of OTT rights has taken a beating. Gone are the days when OTT platforms used to buy the rights to films for a fancy price. The scene now is that the OTT platforms are not showing any interest in buying the rights to flop films.
The latest example is Akhil’s Agent. The OTT rights were sold to Sony Liv but they backed out and now the film is yet to be released on OTT. The same happened with the rights of Tiger Nageswara Rao. The OTT platform that released the film changed the deal last minute and gave less price for the film.
So, in the days to come deals are being made in such a way that the deal will be locked only when the film releases. That means OTT platforms will see the result of the film and then decide the rate of the deal.
So, the producers are no longer in the position of thinking that their biggie will make big deals on OTT and they need to plan their budget properly. The same happened with Ravi Teja’s film with Gopichand Malineni as it was called off at the last minute. We need to see how the producers will plan their post-release deals in the days to come.