Tamil Theatre Owners Wage ‘war’ Against OTT!

Looks like the rumors are coming true!

Call it coincidence, but the early release of ‘GOAT’ on the OTT has in a way infuriated the theatre owners throughout Tamil Nadu. They have recently issued a statement, appealing to the government for immediate action, though they did not directly mention the names of either ‘GOAT’ or ‘Indian 2’.

In their press release, the Tamil Nadu Theatre Owners Association [TNTOA] has called for several demands to be fulfilled by the state government, failing which they’ll be forced to take matters into their own hands. For example, the association wants that no Tamil movie should be premiered outside Tamil Nadu unless the movie has officially hit the screens in Tamil Nadu first.

Apart from that, the association has also demanded a minimum eight week window between the theatrical release and the OTT release, i.e. the movie must not release before two months of its theatrical release are complete.

This concern has emerged from the back to back releases of big ticket movies like ‘Indian 2’ and ‘The Greatest of All Time’. Both starred top actors like Kamal Haasan and ‘Thalapathy’ Vijay in the lead roles, and both were mounted on huge budgets, with ‘GOAT’ being one of the costliest Tamil movies to have released this year.

Yet, when they released, they tanked at the box office. Vijay’s ‘GOAT’ at least earned enough from worldwide collections to recover their basic costs, while Kamal Haasan couldn’t even recover half of the budget of ‘Indian 2’. Yet, both movies have been released on OTT in less than a month of its theatrical release. Vijay’s ‘GOAT’ is scheduled for streaming on Netflix in the early days of October 2024.