How two American companies are calling the shots in Bollywood

January 28, 202510 Mins Read

However, Akshay Kumar and Tiger Shroff-starrer Bade Miyan Chote Miyan and Ajay Devgn’s Maidaan, made with staggering budgets of ₹350 crore and ₹250 crore, respectively, bombed at the box office.

The flop shows were a slap in the face for an industry that had increasingly begun to think of mega stars and action spectacles as the answer to all box office woes. Both films struggled to cross the ₹60 crore mark in domestic box office collections.

But Eid 2024 wasn’t the only bad weekend for Bollywood. There were many throughout the year. Hindi cinema suffered a massive decline at the box office in 2024, with collections dropping 13% to ₹4,679 crore from ₹5,380 crore a year earlier, according to media consulting firm Ormax.

And even in that ₹4,679 crore, nearly a third (31%) came from dubbed versions of South Indian movies. If only original Hindi language films are to be considered, the box office decline was a steep 37%.

“The drop in box office is sizeable and even big-budget films no longer have any legs in theatres,” said Shailesh Kapoor, founder and CEO, Ormax Media. “Earlier, with a certain star, there would be a minimum opening and box office guarantee but now there are no limits to how low the opening can go, which makes the proposition riskier for a producer.”

Several producers blame the Lok Sabha elections and the Indian Premier League (IPL) T20 cricket tournament, both of which ran through much of the April-June quarter, leading to many releases being deferred. But that feeble defence does not quite tell the real story.

In recent months, a fair amount of time after the elections and IPL, films such as Auron Mein Kahan Dum Tha, Sarfira, and Jigra, starring mainstream names such as Ajay Devgn, Akshay Kumar and Alia Bhatt, opened to ₹1.70 crore, ₹2.50 crore and ₹4.55 crore, respectively. They ended their lifetime box office run with collections of ₹8.59 crore, ₹22.13 crore and ₹30.69 crore, respectively.

Even big action spectacles such as Baby John and Bade Miyan Chote Miyan managed modest draws, with earnings of ₹35.98 crore and ₹59.17 crore, respectively.

While the duds have left producers gasping, industry watchers are not really surprised by the dwindling box office returns, considering that nearly 40% of all weekends over the course of the year were bereft of any new Hindi language releases. Production has pretty much come to a standstill in Bollywood.

Studio heads and trade experts say new releases are a function of what gets made, but producers have been holding on to projects that would otherwise have been taken to the floors and subsequently arrived in theatres.

The reason there are no lights-camera-action shouts isn’t because of cricket tournaments or electoral battles. Instead, the current state of affairs is being blamed on the limitless power that Netflix and Amazon Prime Video—two large American streaming platforms with deep pockets—wield over Hindi film production. Without bringing the two over-the-top (OTT) companies on board as a partner, few producers can afford to make movies at all today.

“Everything is now moving to Netflix and Prime Video, which are sort of sitting pretty and demonstrating a certain level of arrogance,” a senior studio head told Mint, on condition of anonymity.

Calling the shots

Until a few years ago, digital and satellite TV were seen as surplus revenue streams. Today, the latter is pretty much defunct; instead, over the last eight years or so, sales to digital platforms have been established as an important source of revenue for films. But it is only now that an OTT partner has become so indispensable that films no longer get made without them acquiring post-theatrical rights. Producers simply do not want to take the risk of filming without finalising a streaming platform as a buyer.

Over the past few months, several Hindi films starring popular actors have made little progress since their announcement, and continue to remain in cold storage, as producers struggle to find OTT buyers and are unsure of what will work at the box office.

For instance, big-budget period drama Karna, which was to feature Suriya and be directed by Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra, has been shelved. Several others, including Sony’s Shaktimaan trilogy, Ranveer Singh’s venture with Tamil director Shankar, and Kartik Aaryan’s film with director Hansal Mehta, are yet to be taken to the floors, industry insiders said.

Queries sent to the makers of Karna, Shaktimaan, and the untitled Ranveer Singh and Kartik Aaryan movies, remained unanswered.

In an even more concerning turn of events, Hindi films such as Aankh Micholi, Zwigato and Jogira Sara Ra Ra, which were among those released in cinemas without OTT partners, are yet to appear on any platform or did so only after a long delay.

Meanwhile, some high-profile films that had announced they would stream on specific platforms after their theatrical release are yet to launch on services, with the platforms backing out of these deals after box-office failures. Tiger Shroff’s Ganapath and thriller The Lady Killer were to premiere on Netflix, but that is yet to happen.

Clearly, OTT platforms, which have burnt their fingers with high-profile deals, are treading with caution now, even insisting on clauses that allow them to back out of deals that may no longer work for them.

Without doubt, unpredictability at the box office has single-handedly led to the over-dependence on streaming revenue. In fact, a lot of films lying in cold storage were conceived as direct-to-digital releases during the pandemic, but with the change in the OTTs’ strategy, find themselves neither here nor there.

“It’s become a very high-risk business suddenly with no table profit,” Ormax’s Kapoor explained. This is in stark contrast to southern movie industries, which are better off and churn out releases on a consistent basis.

From oligopoly to duopoly

While Netflix and Prime Video are sitting pretty at the top, other OTT platforms don’t even come into the picture—they either do not have the wherewithal to buy mid- to high-budget Hindi films or are focusing on other content genres.

Streaming giants such as Netflix are gaining more clout in Bollywood. (Reuters)

The crisis wasn’t as grave until a few months ago. To begin with, the big movie acquisition market in India was a three-player game between Netflix, Prime Video and Disney+ Hotstar.

However, as Disney entered acquisition talks with Reliance, it slowed down both original content creation as well as movie purchases. Disney+ Hotstar has slowed down buying and commissioning decisions over the past few months, while JioCinema isn’t making any big buys.

Meanwhile, as the Zee-Sony merger was called off, the former went on a massive cost-cutting spree, reducing opportunities for even the handful of small-budget films it would acquire annually, and instead focusing on cheap, TV-style originals. It barely looks at a couple of small-budget acquisitions per year now, while SonyLIV isn’t part of the Bollywood game at all.

“Everyone is turning a blind eye, but the truth is competition needs to come back,” said the senior studio head cited earlier.

Is it fair to blame the platforms? Not entirely. They have already seen limited returns from several costly acquisitions, all made during the initial spurt of enthusiasm during the pandemic. Plus, their subscription growth has slowed drastically. “Much of the existing subscriber base is an upmarket clientele that watches a lot of international content that anyway comes out on a regular basis,” the executive explained.

The current situation, the executive added, isn’t as much an issue for top actors or banners as for everyone below them. In particular, the young brigade, comprising names such as Varun Dhawan, Sidharth Malhotra, Tiger Shroff, and numerous others, is facing difficulties with new projects.

Prime Video’s take

Manish Menghani, director–content licensing, Prime Video, India, said the company believes that streaming and theatres are complementary to each other, and are here to co-exist rather than compete. “The success of a film in theatres often contributes to the success of the film on streaming, and streaming, in turn, adds tremendous domestic and international reach to films,” he told Mint.

Prime Video invests in film production in multiple ways, Menghani emphasized, such as original movies (Maja Ma, Ae Watan Mere Watan), co-productions that release in theatres before coming on to the service (Bad Newz, Yodha, Ram Setu, and Neeyat), TVoD (transaction video-on-demand), a pay-per-view category created via the Movie Rentals service that offers customers early, one-time access to new films, direct-to-service premieres, an initiative begun when theatres were shut due to the pandemic (Shershaah, Sardar Udham, Soorarai Pottru, Gehraiyaan) and movies that premiere on the service after their theatrical window (Stree 2, Kalki 2898 AD).

“While streaming has and will continue to be a very important revenue source for films, it is critical that the industry works together to build a sustainable economic model, with a more balanced approach across the film production value chain,” Menghani added.

Netflix didn’t respond to Mint’s queries.

Content is king

Several industry experts emphasize that it is the content Bollywood is backing that fails to find resonance, necessitating dependence on alternative revenue streams. If a film is good, it will do well at the box office, they emphasize, noting that a streaming partner is certain to come on board after seeing how it has performed.

A rare but standout example of this is director Vidhu Vinod Chopra’s 2023 sleeper hit 12th Fail, starring Vikrant Massey, which didn’t have an OTT partner before theatrical release but was scooped up after unexpectedly making over ₹56 crore at the box office.

In 2021, The Great Indian Kitchen, a controversial Malayalam film that touched upon the politics around the entry of women in the Sabarimala Temple in Kerala and the stigma associated with menstruation, was rejected by all the major OTT platforms. It eventually made its way to Neestream, a niche Malayalam service, elicited much praise, and was later acquired by Amazon Prime Video.

“While de-risking is important, it is incorrect to base a production decision entirely on the basis of whether something will get licensed. That’s not how a creative business can or should run,” said Tanuj Garg, managing partner, Ellipsis Entertainment. “As a creator, the emphasis should be to make a good, cost-effective film. Needless to say, if it can get pre-sold at the outset or during the making, that’s a strong safety net.”

Vivek Krishnani, chief executive officer of MovieVerse Studios, the film division of IN10 Media Network, emphasized that the theatrical medium gives substantial returns if the content resonates with a larger audience, as evident in the ₹800 crore earnings of the dubbed Hindi version of Pushpa 2. “Hindi cinema needs to expand its audience base and work on going from cities to mass centres,” Krishnani said. “But even then, a film must be made at the right cost.”

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