‘OTT HAS A LARGER AUDIENCE BASE COMPARED THEATRES’
Abhishek Bachchan’s last five releases came out during the pandemic. In fact, all his projects — Ludo (2020), The Big Bull (2021), Breathe - Into The Shadows, Bob Biswas (2021) and Dasvi — released directly on the web. Since theatres are running in full strength now, the talk around box-office figures has gained relevance again. Ask if his projects taking the OTT route ever bothered him, and the 46-year-old shares, “I am an actor. My job is to act. Obviously, we love to be on the big screen, but I think a huge advantage of being on a streaming platform is the kind of reach you have. OTT has a larger audience base compared to theatres.”
Bachchan adds that thanks to OTT, films now reach a wider audience, including people in the interior parts of India. “Be it Ludo or The Big Bull [they were watched by a large audience]... In case of Dasvi, 400 million people could access it on the web by the push of a button. Even if we had to debate on it, if 10% of that number decided to watch the film in theatres, that’d be a total of 40 million. Take the average ticket price that is ₹120 in India and do the math. The figure is mind-boggling,” says Bachchan, who will next be seen in the third season of Breathe.
In recent times, it’s been observed that box-office numbers affect the mindset of moviegoers. In fact, the numbers become a factor in deciding if they want to watch the film in theatres or not. Bachchan is glad that the number game doesn’t exist in the web space, yet. “How nice that OTT platforms don’t release this data. Unfortunately, the box office has become the focus of the audience over the years. Earlier, whether a film is good or not used to be the focus,” he ends.