All chatter, like the show, must go on!

Has the money in the ecosystem shrunk altogether Why has everyone been saying the OTT partyrsquos overrdquo I ask Manish Menghani who heads content licensing at Amazon Prime VideoYup it might sound rude But the question comes from a fair spaceWhich is a rant on behalf of the customer mdash and thatrsquos what journalists often do whether covering the BMC or Bollywoodentertainment The latter directly affects professional lives of at least a millionplus in MumbaiThe crowd gathered before us for a panel discussion on movie distribution are predominantly independent filmmakers usually an antsy lot at NFDCrsquos Waves Film Bazaar in GoaItrsquos possibly the most productive Indian marketplace annually for buyerssellers of contentideas lasting four days Call it lsquochaar din ki chandni phir Andheri raatrsquo if you mayMenghani says ldquoItrsquos not that the money has shrunk You plan programming twothree years ahead There was an expectation and the valuation based on that future performance of content on the platform didnrsquot live up to itldquoThe jolt in the system is that everything now is performance linked Likewise boxoffice linkedrdquoThe latter was chiefly the reason just few days ago mdash after a muted release of Kanu Behlrsquos Cannesselection Agra mdash 46 Indian filmmakers got together to petition for parity with screenings at cinemasmultiplexesLetrsquos name this Agra summitThe conflict being the usual chickenegg stuff Theatres shaft indies by way of showsslots etc OTTs slash them further for failing the boxoffice testEither way the bloke who spent years on a story to tell sits down to wonder if they can endure this foreverBut then again as Aparna Purohit who leads Aamir Khan Productions rightly put it to the audience ldquoYou didnrsquot wait for us to commission your film You went ahead and made it Now letrsquos just figure how to reach out to larger numbersrdquoFrankly you could argue the world owes the artiste nothing mdash and so what if they chose selfexpression over circusmass entertainment right Wrong I understand theatres are primarily a business But are they only a business mdash simply auditoriums selling snacksAre they not equally a part of the entertainment ecosystem with a natural responsibility thus to push fresher lesser tested talents mdash for how else do you expect movies to get sustainably betterdiverse for the viewer in the long runBesides that soft corner for at least a single 6 pm show for supposed indies as petitioned by indie filmmakers mdash Irsquod suggest theatres should even screen a curated special short film before features to push newer voices stillSo many out there Allow audiences to discover Thatrsquos how you pay it forward to a creative community you earn your bucks from noldquoYou canrsquot push beyond a point too We donrsquot want multiplexes shutting down the way so many cinemas didrdquo Aashish Singh CEO Red Chillies says True thatDevang Sampat from the multiplex chain Cinepolis was meant to be on the same panel He had to back out in the last minute Glad for himI suspect this audience wouldrsquove descended on the solitary Mr Sampath having to take many for the team But is this theatre lafda merely an ancient indie concern More often than not mainstream movies suffer as wellIntuitively if distribution is the gap then where are the distributors Irsquom told at the Waves Film Bazaar there were around 260 producers mdash and two distributors Havenrsquot factchecked It sounds about rightIn commercial Bollywood for instance distributors used to be at the centre of the creative economy So much so that up until his film Kaabil 2017 as producer Rakesh Roshan once told me hersquod directly raise money from distributors from the 14 territories in the country to make filmsThose distributors in turn taking full ownership of the said films in their territories would heavily hustle for its best possible release sharply targeting prints publicityhellip With indies of course itrsquos the subscriptionbased OTTs that were meant to champion the films heralding a revolution for selfexpression of sorts Red Chilliesrsquo Singh says ldquoThere are really twothree OTT players even buying filmsrdquoIn his defence Prime Videorsquos Menghani argues there are multiple ways for filmmakers to go directtoservice rather than commercially risking theatres One of which is getting remunerated through a dashboard for the number of hours viewedThe ongoing tussle between commercial cinema and OTT of course is over the number of weeks it takes the film to land on the streamer following theatrical releaseBut isnrsquot there the world of internet out there with people on their phones consuming what else but content all dayThatrsquos who Aamir Khan directly approached after theatrical run of Sitaare Zameen Par 2025 with payperview on YouTube that everybody accesses How did that experiment go By the looks of it perhaps not too wellPurohit who led this move for her company says selling TV rights for the film has become a challenge since itrsquos already out there ldquoBut yoursquove gotta keep at it One experiment is not gonna open gatesrdquoShe reveals ldquoHas Sitaare Zameen Par done the expected business It hasnrsquot Itrsquos done 20x of the revenues of a film on TVOD Transactional Video on Demand But what is that NothingrdquoMayank Shekhar attempts to make sense of mass cultureHe tweets mayankw14 Send your feedback to mailbagmiddaycomThe views expressed in this column are the individualrsquos and donrsquot represent those of the paper