By: Aswathy Nair
Rumours were rife lately that Kangana Ranaut’s much-awaited film Thalaivi was in for a massive loss due to the ongoing Coronavirus lockdown. However, the National Film Award-winning actress has confirmed that her film has already recovered a part of its investment by selling digital rights to Netflix and Amazon Prime Video.
Talking to an online publication, Ranaut said, “For Thalaivi, it is a bilingual film. As a matter of fact, the film is sold to both Netflix and Amazon in both Hindi and Tamil for around ₹55 crore. They also have satellite rights to sell for both languages and also distribution rights. So, whenever a project is conceived, there is a financial blueprint to it, recovery blueprint to it. Then they match actors and their market worth and accordingly are approached. When I take a project, I always see the recovery blueprint and then I charge.”
When asked if she would be okay with Thalaivi skipping a theatrical release and premiere directly on an OTT platform, she said, “It depends. For example, a film like Thalaivi just cannot release on digital because it is such a massive scale film, neither a movie like Manikarnika (2019) is a digital space film, but yes films like Panga (2020), Judgementall Hai Kya (2019) also cater to that audience. The way the film is made, it is very digital-friendly. They have recovered huge costs through digital itself. So, it depends.”
Helmed by well-known South Indian filmmaker A. L. Vijay, Thalaivi is a biopic based on the life of renowned actress-turned-politician J Jayalalithaa who served six times as the Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu, India. She died in 2016.
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