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.
Disney Hotstar has around 10 million subscribers in India and the reason why it leads is IPL cricket matches which also fetch the best viewership numbers. The release of Laxmii saw 28% of the Hotstar base viewing and the film and there were 9 lakh (900k) apprx new subscribers which came on the day for Laxmii. There are many criterion to measure sucess on OTT with the main being the extra subscribers a product brings and then in the long run its about the minutes invested and its just not views as views can last for just a minute or two. Here the 9 lakh is a record and probably the main sign of success but the question here is do they stick or its just for the film due to a star like Akshay Kumar and then gone. Now eventually where Laxmii goes its difficult to judge but its realistic to expect around 75-80% of the Hotstar base to watch the film which will will mean an audience of around 80 lakh in the final run taking the subscriber base as 10.9 million (1.09 crore) now. But again here a lot of content on the platform could be hitting this much of the base in the long run so thats not much of a guide.
Laxmii is a huge success in terms of what it is done on OTT but that is because it is basically competing with garbage and everything which has come before does not have any numbers (Excluding dil Bechara maybe). There has been nothing at the anticipation level of Laxmii that saw a premiere on OTT, its mainly C grade stuff on OTT. The question is where would it stand if a Sooryavanshi or Radhe or Shamshera or 1983 came in the same way but that cannot be judged and may never be judged.
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.
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