Laxmii Is A Success On Digital (BOI)

Question

The Akshay Kumar horror comedy Laxmii has scored on digital by recording around 37 lakhs (3.7 million) concurrent views on release. This is a record beating the 23 lakh (2.3 million) of Dil Bechara earlier this year but it has to remembered that was a freely available to all while Laxmii was on the paid platform only.

 

 

There are live cricket events which are higher than Laxmii but in terms of films and other content its the best ever seen. But the success is relative as what are you beating. There are major films on OTT but they are always after a theatrical release. Not much can be said about the films premiered on digital so far like Gulabo Sitabo, Dil Bechara, Gunjan Saxena or Sadak 2 and others. The public would hardly be interested in these films after the trailers. The content was very poor putting it kindly and then the other competition is all these web series which are like C grade films which will hardly take openings in lakhs if they were films and that is hardly any competition for Laxmii also.There are always mad figures that go around like a couple of weeks back there were some reports that some web series called Mirzapur 2 had 16 million views (1.6 crore) over a week and if we take that at face value then the numbers of Laxmii are nothing and it cant get anywhere near even in a week. The foreign OTT platforms do not give subscription numbers in India but in the last note to investors in the US stock market in August the second biggest market for both Amazon Prime and Netfix was United Kingdom and here Prime had 8 million subscribers while Netflix was at 12.5 million. In India Amazon prime is ahead of the two so that means both are under 8 million subscribers and that pretty much puts the these 16 million numbers into perspective. On a side note sequels first started in Hollywood with films like Jaws 2, Rocky 2, Superman 2 etc and only in India someone can think of a name like Mirzapur 2 which is tacky as can be. Cinema has also seen such classic names like Tum Bin 2 and Bheja Fry 2.

 The satellite results will also give an idea about the film but Dil Bechara did fail badly on satellite after good results on OTT. The potential box office ranges of Laxmii in a normal scenario will be given in time.

Answer 1

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Answer 2

This had to happen. If the figures are accurate, then it's a big slap on the faces of the Boycott gang. Dil Bechara getting 2.3 million views is insane even if it was streaming for free, but that was more to do with the sentimental issue of his unfortunate death. Disaster TV ratings just prove this fact.

It's obvious Laxmii had to break all OTT records as it is the first major Bollywood film releasing online. Also those films which have a theatrical release and then a OTT release after 8 weeks won't garner such views as majority of the audience would have already watched it.

Still 3.7 million views is a huge number and a big win for Hotstar. It's longetivity will depend on it's satellite premiere, which I am expecting to be in the 1.5-1.6cr range easy, similar to Total Dhamaal, G4 and other masala films. Just shows how big a grosser this could have been had it released theatrically. I feel Fox Star have missed a big opportunity.

Only Bhuj has a realistic chance of beating this figure which seems very difficult as it's not in the masala genre. Coolie No 1 releasing on Prime doesn't help it's cause as it has a lower market share than Hotstar.

Comments

The main thing is hotstar get 9 lac new subscribers in a single day which is almost 9-10% of their subscription base and the amount from this subscription is 35cr+ on the day , so they are definitely in profit from laxxmi and it also indicate how a big star can pull the viewers even on digital.

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Yes that's true. And you're assuming that all the additional 9 lac subscribers paid 399 for VIP subscription. Some of them would have paid for the Premium subscription as well and the figure would probably be towards the 50cr mark for Hotstar.

Films struggle to get past 50cr weekend or Lifetime, and here they are getting it in one day. Such numbers would convince other platforms to negotiate with other bigger films and release them straight to OTT. However, I hope none of those films take the bait and they stick with theatrical release only