Indian film brotherhood and ace actor Aamir Khan had seen the failure of Thugs of Hindostan and Laal Singh Chaddha so personally, that he has decided to slip away from acting and start making films. He also mentioned in many interviews recently that he has few projects in his production house Aamir Khan Productions. In fact, one of the films which are in the making is Taare Zameen Par, about which he seems confident.

It’s basically the holy grail in terms of liberating rights for any producer or director because non-theatrical rights are such a big deal. But in a shocking development, Khan has chosen not to exercise the advance sale of the non-theatrical rights (including digital and satellite) for his upcoming films. This decision comes at a time when quite large amounts of advances are being quoted for the producers against non-theatrical rights. Rather, Aamir is going to postpone the sale of all these rights until after the completion of the theatrical run of his films.

Khan’s objective is to recover the health of the theatrical market, and he is, therefore, advocating a twelve-week period between the release of a film and its accessibility through OTT platforms. While this decision is meant to attract viewers to theater halls, it has grave business implications as well. For instance, if a film does not perform well, its other non-theatrical rights especially satellite and digital may not be considered and this results in Aamir’s team being sacrificed.

Aamir Khan’s courageous move is also sending a clear signal: He won’t let the Indian audiences shift to digital consumption in a jiffy but is making them adapt to the traditional cinema bhaiya now. What this approach entails is usually risky but would put a different spin in how the Bollywood film market is managed. Only time and Aamir’s brilliance, if any, will reveal whether the theater market will be revived and whether other filmmakers will join his trend.

( Source : Deccan Chronicle )