Maryade Prashne on OTT: Director Nagaraj Somayaji on his learnings from the theatrical and digital releases of his film

Maryade Prashne, the first production venture of RJ Pradeepa’s Sakkath Studio, had a middling theatrical outing back in November 2024 and then made its way to OTT well after the 60-day mark. Written for the screen and directed by Nagaraj Somayaji, based on a story by Pradeepa, the film dropped on Amazon Prime Video on February 7, where the reception was a lot better than during the theatrical release.

Nagaraj Somayaji: Audiences will watch a film only at their convenience

Circumstances are not right for audiences to come to theatres and watch movies. They will watch a film when it is convenient for them. The fact that audiences are watching it on OTT means that they are taking their comfort into consideration. It’s not that there is no audience for Kannada cinema, says the filmmaker.

Also read: Maryade Prashne movie review: Class-conflict revenge drama is all bark and no bite 

The problem that content-based Kannada films face, according to Nagaraj, is that they often do not get enough time for word-of-mouth publicity to spread and for audiences to then figure out a good time to go and watch them. He also reckons that audiences have preset notions about the films that they will definitely watch in theatres and the ones that they will wait for on OTT.

“Given that many of these films get a multiplex-movie tag, they are then at the mercy of these exhibitors that are operated by corporations. They won’t put up with you for 3 weeks, in the hope that business will pick up. If you had 15 screens in the second week, by the third, you are down to 4, and by the 4th, you will have just one screen and the taunt is to prove to him that you can fill that one. Some do that, but we did not make such an effort,” says the filmmaker, speaking to Kannda Pichhar.

Also read: Maryade Prashne’s Suneel Raoh: My character Sathisha is the personification of hope 

Nagaraj says that going forward, the footfalls in theatres could fall further, with audiences preferring to watch a lot more movies on OTT. The fact that the supply far outweighs the demand is the bigger pressing issue. “When you have 8-10 films releasing week-on-week, there is no way that a person can watch all of them. Even if he watches one per day, by the end of the week, he has not seen all and there are new ones in already. There is no way that audiences can watch all the Kannada films that are releasing in theatres every year,” he adds.

Two weeks since the OTT release, Nagaraj can’t say that his producer can breathe easy, but what he has seen is that a lot of audiences have commented after watching the film on Prime Video, that they missed it in theatres. “Just making a good film is not enough; you need to know how to crack the box office formula. That is what holds value,” he signs off.