A Study to Explore the Impact of OTT on the Indian Film Industry

Abstract

Over-the-top streaming platforms have seen explosive growth during the last few years. On their mobile devices, audiences employ multiple platforms to view films, documentaries, and web series. The cinema theatre industry is under competition from online video streaming services like “Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hotstar, and Zee5, which provide movies and other video content”. During COVID-19, many movie theatres were forced to close because of losses incurred during the lockdown. The owners of these theatres were concerned that the cinema viewing experience would eventually be replaced by digital platforms, reducing the number of viewers who visited theatres. Several movies released after the pandemic are raking in enormous profits at the box office and contributing to the overall revenue of the entertainment industry.

Despite India’s passion for viewing movies in theatres, the emergence of these OTT platforms is continuing to generate uncertainty about where this would take the theatre industry since they are already experiencing a significant loss of revenue due to the lockdown. This study aims to discover how these OTT platforms threaten cinema theatres and how the pandemic has affected both industries. This research also studies the shift in dynamics of the film industry after arriving at the OTT concept in India and the various causes for the change