5 min readMar 8, 2026 07:00 PM IST
While many stakeholders initially saw the arrival and rise of over-the-top (OTT) platforms as a significant change that would give a new lease on life to movies that didn’t get their fair share of theatrical run or offer a chance to those films that would have otherwise never gone beyond film festivals, they have come to realise that it is, in fact, a double-edged sword. Among the many mandates of streaming platforms that have been proving a headache for filmmakers is the four-week window between theatrical and OTT releases of new movies.
At the same time, streaming platforms have also been prioritising their own originals rather than buying everything that is being released. Recently, renowned producer-author G Dhananjayan broke down the business model of OTTs and their selection, or lack thereof, of movies.
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How do OTT platforms buy films?
“For Tamil cinema, OTTs are both an opportunity and a threat. If a movie is good, OTTs are still ready to buy it, no matter what. There are three ways OTT platforms buy films: outright purchase, hybrid model, and revenue share. Most people in the industry don’t understand the difference between these. A film’s proper victory, in my opinion, is if it manages to secure an OTT deal before its release (an outright purchase), as the makers certainly get a certain percentage of their investment right away,” he shared during an interview.
Mentioning that most OTT deals are struck before release, he noted that only a handful of films are picked up after release. “In some cases, streaming platforms purchase films after seeing their theatrical success. The most recent example of this was Thalaivar Thambi Thalaimaiyil, which Netflix bought almost four days after its release, noticing the positive responses. Nonetheless, 99 per cent of OTT deals happen before release,” Dhananjayan said.
Explaining the hybrid model, he stated, “If a platform has a slight doubt about a project’s potential performance, although the movie seems good, they would go for the hybrid model. They would initially provide a minimum guarantee (MG). For instance, if a filmmaker expects Rs 6 crore for a movie, they would agree to pay Rs 3 crore for the first year and offer a revenue share thereafter. So, for the first year, the movie’s makers will have to make do with the Rs 3 crore, and they will start getting revenue share from the second year onwards. Amazon Prime Video is not the only streaming giant to use this model; platforms like Sun NXT and Aha also use it.”
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‘Only 47% of Tamil movies released in 2025 got OTT releases’
If an OTT platform has no trust in the project whatsoever, he said, they would suggest a 100 per cent revenue share. “If the movie generates a decent response in theatres, they will agree to stream it on their platform on a revenue-share model. Otherwise, they overlook it completely,” he noted. Maintaining that a whopping 285 Tamil films were released last year, Dhananjayan noted that only 135 made it to OTT platforms. “Only 47 per cent of total movies that hit the screens eventually reached OTTs. 150 films were completely rejected. Of the 135 films, only 44 were purchased outright prior to their release; the remaining were all streamed on a revenue-share model. So, only 15 per cent of total releases (285) managed to strike a pre-release OTT deal. While 91 of the total got some money through revenue sharing, the remaining 150 got nothing.”
He further maintained that while 22 of the 44 movies purchased outright were headlined by major stars and were big-ticket projects, 16 were medium-budget films featuring popular artistes. Only six were small movies, he added. Mentioning that director Lokkesh Ajls’ Eleven (2025) did not secure a proper OTT deal despite a serviceable theatrical performance, Dhananjayan said it was instead released on an OTT platform under a revenue-share model. “Surprisingly, Eleven ended up collecting Rs 6 crore in revenue share. It even got a bonus from the OTT platform. Normally, they pay Rs 4 per hour of streaming and Rs 8 for a two-hour movie. The platform instead gave Eleven Rs 12, including a bonus.”
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