Exclusive! Here’s why Manoj Kana’s award-winning Kenjira moved from Action OTT to Neestream

With OTT platforms in Malayalam being a dime a dozen of late, finding avenues to stream a film has become easy but to reach the audience is still a challenge. Award-winning filmmaker Manoj Kana seems to have been facing the hurdle with his acclaimed movie Kenjira. 

The movie had initially opted for a direct-to-OTT release on the new streaming platform Action OTT in the pay-per-view format on August 17. Talking exclusively to OTTplay, the director tells us, “The platform had approached us with a 60:40 revenue sharing format which made sense to us and they said they were launching it on a big scale with a leading actor. We were expecting close to 3 lakh viewers for the film but only 146 had watched it till now. The movie’s release also didn’t get the required publicity it deserved.”

The filmmaker said that he had invested almost 23 years of life to make the movie, which is in the Paniya language spoken by the Paniya tribe of Wayanad and nearby areas of Karnataka.

The movie had won the Kerala State Award for Second Best Film last year. “The movie cost almost Rs 3 crore to make unlike my previous films like Amoeba. We also got big stars like Mammootty and Manju Warrier to share the film’s posters to build up the buzz,” says the director. “So, we were looking forward to the revenue generated from the streaming platform. However, the content in the platform could only be accessed on the phone and nowhere else, hampering viewers from watching the film.”

The director tells us that they have now come to terms with another streaming platform, Neestream, to showcase the film. “The movie will now be streaming on Neestream from September 7,” he says.