‘I HAD A CLICHED OPINION OF OTT FILM RELEASES’
Parineeti Chopra shares how the reach of OTT platforms has won her over
This has been quite an eventful year for actor Parineeti Chopra as it started on a high, with not one but three releases. While Saina and Sandeep Aur Pinky Faraar (SAPF) had a theatrical outing before the second wave of the pandemic hit, The Girl On The Train took the direct-to-OTT route.
In fact, SAPF — which had a very short run, theatrically, before the cinemas shut again — got a new lease of life upon its release on the web recently. That’s something Chopra is extremely pleased about. “I had the clichéd opinion that films should have a theatrical release, and a film coming out on OTT is a compromised release,” she admits, adding that she no longer has that idea.
“In the last one year, there has been such a shift as to how people are watching films. Now, the primary mode of watching any kind of content is OTT,” she says.
Chopra, 32, feels that the web space gives a film as well as an actor a far wider reach compared to any other medium. “So when we release the film on OTT, the volume of audience we get on the very first day, from all over the world, is hard to achieve anywhere else. I’m happy about that and not thinking about OTT or theatre [debate],” says the actor, grateful for the fact that “all my three films are getting so much love”.
She also feels that she’s getting the same appreciation as she used to get in her initial years in Bollywood. “It feels like the old days again,” she gushes.
Looking back at her decade-long acting career, Chopra says, “The trajectory has been helpful because I’m still young and learn from my failures.” She shares that her process of choosing films has evolved, but one thing hasn’t changed: “If I’m the obvious casting for a film, I won’t do it. It’d mean I’ve done the same thing before... If I get something that scares me as an actor, I’ll jump into it.”