When Tamil superstar Vijay took the oath and became Tamil Nadu’s Chief Minister, it revolutionised the entertainment industry behind. And though his political rise has already set the stage for the state’s history, now it’s not only shaking up the film business, officials say.
One of the hottest deals in the burgeoning South Indian entertainment market, according to trade gossip stories, involved the sudden sale of OTT rights to Vijay’s Jana Nayagan (the critically watched flick).
After a long-denied release delay, with Vijay enjoying political support from the public and also gaining a lot of popularity among the public, once again the movie, which was troubled by the movie which had been delayed, gets put back in the public eye. Few among the biggest OTT players now vie for the film’s digital streaming rights, sources said.
Early in the year, Jana Nayagan’s OTT rights supposedly sold to Amazon Prime Video for almost Rs 120 crore. But amid delays in the film’s censor certification process and uncertainty about its release date, the streaming behemoth has apparently exited the original contract.
That is said to have been putting pressure on the producers’ pocketbooks and throwing some doubt on the OTT future of the movie. But all of that changed entirely now. The new Chief Minister, Vijay, has been the target of a fair share of controversy: Jana Nayagan.
Trade analysts argue that Vijay’s rise from superstar to CM had a great commercial impact, and the film now has an earnings profile of a very respectable kind. The actor-politician’s appeal is now at new heights, and the project is especially attractive to digital outlets that would love to bank on public interest and fan enthusiasm.
Now, a major OTT platform, which has just entered the Indian streaming space, is coming to producers for a big price tag, which means it might be much better than ever before under the old Amazon deal. The number, though officially not publicly available, is likely to be as much as around Rs 150 crore, or more than previously thought possible, according to fans and others in the industry, if the new bids are successful.
If successful, the deal would make it one of the biggest OTT deals in Tamil cinema history. Production cost inflation is high, and the South scene is facing immense pressure from the likes of big-budget projects like Toxic, which also means that the development is expected to be of great help to the producers.
The producer, K. Venkat Narayana, said recently that Jana Nayagan has an expected opening for theatres in a fortnight from today. The ruling has already increased the OTT race, as multiple companies claimed to be prepared to splurge millions of dollars on streaming rights ahead of a theatrical date.
Fans are waiting for a formal confirmation of their affiliation with the OTT along with an announcement of its release date. There’s already a lot of buzz about the movie’s prospects for business on social media so far, as one source of buzz, and many are dubbing it Vijay’s most politically significant film yet.
And while Vijay has now come to negotiate cinema and governance, so too, Jana Nayagan isn’t just another commercial entertainer going around to perform anymore; she’s something more than a performer. The movie is now interpreted to be seen as part of a larger-than-life interpretation of Vijay’s outsized influence, the actor's outsized role in both politics and entertainment.
