Markand Adhikari’s hard-hitting column on Bollywood & OTT becomes top trend on Twitter

Bollywood ’22: Big Screen succumbs to small screen, the recent column by Markand Adhikari, Chairman and Managing Director of Sab Group, became a top trend on Twitter pan-India.

The column, which talks about Bollywood’s lacklustre show in the year and what it needs to do to redeem itself from the crisis, was trending at No 3 for more than five hours on December 30, 2022. At one point, it trended at No 2 spot too. The top three most-talked about issues on the day were #HeerabenModi, #RishabhPant and #E4mBigScreenSuccumbsToSmall.

Twitter was abuzz with users commenting and counter commenting on the facts presented in the article. 

“As said our Bollywood is full of talented and creative people, now it must raise the bar and deliver robust, high quality content. Otherwise, only English and South Indian films doing real business are not good indicators for cinema halls,” wrote a Twitter user.

Another user posted, “Big budget films nowadays are not able to compete with small budget movies on OTT given the difference in content and this needs to be addresses if Bollywood has to survive”

If you look at 2022, big stars like Aamir Khan, Akshay Kumar and Ranveer Singh failed to draw in cinegoers despite big budget movies, great music and a pan-India marketing blitzkrieg. In the hard-hitting article, Adhikari pointed out various reasons why Bollywood needs to up its game. 

“Only three films, ‘Bhool Bhulaiya’, ‘Drishyam 2’ (a remake of a Malayalam hit), and ‘The Kashmir Files’ (many have suspicions about its success but the figures speak for themselves) were proven hits. There was also a Rs 400-crore film that was a “designer” hit – half of its budget was spent on proving it a hit” wrote Adhikari.

He further added, “Yet, Bollywood makers are not much worried. They only have to recover their print and advertising (P&A) costs or a maximum of 20-25% of their budget and the rest is “OTT malik”. In short, for Bollywood makers, film release has become merely a formality, since 75% of the cost is borne by OTTs irrespective of the film’s performance in theatres. Thus, the big screen has succumbed to the small screen and has come to totally rely on it. This is ironic because they used to look down upon it in the past.”

As per Ormax Media’s ‘The India Box Office Report’, the Hindi film industry has only contributed 33 per cent to the Rs 9,024 crore collected at the box office in India during January-October 2022, while it usually contributes 40-45 per cent to India’s domestic gross box-office collections in a year. Even within that, more than a third has come from Hindi versions of south Indian films.