Thudarum OTT rights: JioHotstar bets big on Mohanlal in 2025, bags two back-to-back hits

While Mohanlal’s L2: Empuraan has already become the highest grossing Malayalam film ever and his latest movie Thudarum, which has released to largely positive reviews and looks set to become the actor’s second movie to cross at least Rs 50 Cr in the year, JioHotstar seems to be the biggest gainer from these.

The streaming platform, which had already bagged the OTT rights for Empuraan, the second instalment of the Lucifer franchise, for a record price, has also bought the streaming rights of Mohanlal’s Thudarum. The latter’s deal, however, seems to be snapped up by the platform at a much lower price.

JioHotstar bags Thudarum’s OTT rights

The film’s producer, M Renjith, was reportedly in discussions with the platform last year and had decided to sell the rights to JioHotstar, while the Disney-Reliance merger was happening. At this time, the streaming market value for Mohanlal’s movies had dipped considerably, as the actor’s last hit traced back to December 2023 with Jeethu Joseph’s Neru. Both Malaikottai Vaaliban and Barroz failed to captivate audience in theatres and OTT platforms.

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This forced the producers to also enter negotiations with other streaming platforms and delayed Thudarum release, which was earlier planned to be January end release. The film’s rights were sold at a nominal price that previous Mohanlal movies by the end of 2024.

However, now with the film receiving positive responses, this has worked in JioHotstar’s favour. Of late, the makers of most Malayalam movies have been holding off the sale of the digital streaming rights till its theatrical release. For films that went on become a theatrical success, this meant better prices of their OTT rights, but if they don’t do well, that meant the right might not even be sold.

Thudarum OTT release date

Empuraan had hit the streaming platform four weeks after its theatrical release, and going by the trend, Tharun Moorthy’s Thudarum could also release by end of May on JioHotstar. The movie, which hit theatres on April 25, also has Shobana, Binu Pappu and ad fillmaker Prakash Varma in lead roles, with Mohanlal essaying its protagonist Shanmugham, a taxi driver.

Co-written by KR Sunil and Tharun, the drama-thriller revolves around the series of incidents that impact Shanmugham’s family after his cherished Ambassador car is impounded by the cops.

Also read: Thudarum movie review: Tharun Moorthy’s crafty, gripping thriller lets Mohanlal revel in his ‘complete actor’ avatar