I strongly believe that we are a cinema-driven society and yes, the pandemic has completely changed the story. When the world is adapting to the newer way of living, cinema is no exception. For years we have been seeing stereotypical cinema that we have divided into commercial cinema, parallel cinema, art cinema and so on. But in the last 9-10 months, I think people have seen more series from around the world than cinema.
Waking up to good content every day, here good content doesn't necessarily mean having popular actors or anything, but newer content that has never been shown to the world — people are exploring the same these days. I believe there is no art cinema, parallel cinema or commercial cinema, there is only good content and bad content — good content that people like to watch and bad content which is not accepted by people.
2021 is going to exciting because the budget to make content is going to be reduced, due to which filmmakers cannot go to foreign locations just for a song and invest a huge amount of money. Going by the current scenario, people won't have money to invest at such a scale in film projects.
In the coming year, filmmakers will surely try to make movies that get global recognition — Delhi Crime, Axone, A Family Man are some clear examples of that. Film business is just like any other business, whatever the demand is, the supplier supplies the same, and in this case quality content and unconventional stories are the demand in today’s times. OTT platforms will try to cater the same and keep making content that converses with the masses. Even commercial films are releasing on OTT platforms — Coolie No.1 is releasing on Amazon Prime on December 25.
Future filmmakers will have to take time out to review their script more as the audience is progressing with time, now people don't want celebrities to do the same old stories, instead people want more realistic stories, actors, scripts and even locations — for example: Paatal Lok or Delhi Crime, AK vs AK, mockumentary (no one has ever thought of this genre). Quality content is the future, many new actors, directors, filmmakers will get an opportunity to showcase their talent as the number of OTT platforms are going to increase. These past few months and the coming years will surely be a game-changer for the cinema business.
Pratish Nair is the Founder and Director of Pratish Nair School of Branding and Advertising
