Thug Life OTT release: No Karnataka opening gives no more excuse for Kamal Haasan-Mani Ratnam film for early streaming debut
Thug Life OTT release: With distributors in Karnataka opting out, the film's makers are now negotiating an earlier OTT release on Netflix, expected by late June or early July.
Last Updated: 09.15 AM, Jun 22, 2025
Thug Life, the recently released Tamil film starring actor-politician Kamal Haasan in the lead role, has not been making good noise at the box office, thanks to the disappointment it came with. We had also recently reported that the film might soon break its eight-week window period for OTT release. Despite the film facing a major blow even before the release, due to the controversy surrounding with Karnataka release, it looks like the state distributor not wanting to release Thug Life anymore, the makers are further pushed to release the film on streaming platform sooner than expected.
Thug Life OTT release:
Even before the release of Thug Life, a confident Kamal Haasan had said that it is a “pragmatic” thing to release the film on OTT after eight weeks since the theatrical debut. But a lot has changed ever since the release of the most-expected film. Thug Life which bore much anticipations from fans, ended up being a disappointment. Financially too, the film did not fare well and has so far collected only less than Rs 100 crore worldwide.
The recent blow to the makers of Thug Life is that the Karnataka distributors have also openly stated that it doesn’t make sense to release the film in the state, given it has been two weeks since release and the negative criticism also adds up to it. Now, this will put an extra pressure on Thug Life makers to release it soon on Netflix which has bagged the OTT rights. Kamal Haasan and Mani Ratnam who produced the film, are now in talks with the streaming platform to fix a release date. One can expect the film to release by end of June or July first week.
Thug Life: Plot, cast and crew
Directed by Mani Ratnam and featuring Kamal in the lead, the ensemble star cast also includes Simbu, Trisha, Nasser, Abhirami, Joju George, Aishwarya Lekshmi, Ashok Selvan and others. With music by AR Rahman and Ravi K Chandran cranking the camera, Thug Life is a gangster action drama about an aged gangster who faces threat from his adopted son, setting up a game of deceit, emotion, and action.