Foreign films fail to excite as pricey tickets, OTT hurt

Theatre owners rue that the urban, upmarket audience base for these films has moved fully to OTT after covid

- Lata Jha

Foreign language films, including those in English, that do not boast grand special effects, action, or popular faces, and are mostly content-driven dramas, are yet to see a resurgence at the Indian box office post covid.

Ridley Scott’s Napoleon and Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon, are among the recent international titles that, despite favourable reviews, failed to excite cinegoers in the country. Theatre owners rue that the urban, upmarket audience base that would flock to these films before covid, has completely moved to OTT, and studios have stopped making enough efforts to market the movies for release in India, limiting theatre count to 20 or 30 in the top metros.