The television premiere announcement of UI on a popular Kannada general entertainment channel has set off speculation that the Upendra film's OTT rights remain unsold.
Last Updated: 05.23 PM, Jan 29, 2025
If the makers of actor-director Upendra’s UI are to be believed, the film’s satellite and digital rights have been sold – just not to Sun Network, as was reported a few weeks ago, which they refuted. Zee Network, sources said, is where the film was headed, and an end-of-January OTT release was said to be likely.
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For the longest time, Zee Network was only picking satellite rights of Kannada films, with movie makers free to sell the digital rights elsewhere. Amazon Prime Video has been the popular choice for most, even though the streamer has stopped outright sales and entertains pay-per-view deals only.
It seems that UI’s deal with Zee Network may also be only for the TV rights, with the channel. Late last evening, Zee Kannada released a promo of UI’s impending TV premiere. While the channel has not revealed a date, with a ‘coming soon’ attached to the promo, netizens were quick to ask why the television premiere was happening before the OTT release. It set off speculation that the OTT rights may still be unsold.
The team of UI had, at one point, claimed that the film was the highest grosser of 2024 for the Kannada film industry, even though there was no official confirmation of its budget or theatrical revenue. Trackers estimate that the film made in the range of Rs 40 cr to Rs 45 cr gross, which is the highest ever for an Upendra movie.
The film, which had a good opening, when it was released on December 20, then saw a sharp fall in collections after Kiccha Sudeep’s Max hit theatres 5 days later. UI ended its theatrical run last week and an OTT release announcement was expected. Instead, the TV premiere announcement came, which audiences were not too keen on, given that the innumerable advertisement breaks would take away from the viewing experience, especially for a film like UI, which, the filmmaker said required audiences to focus and pay keen attention to grasp all the messages he’s embedded.