With the Coronavirus pandemic affecting the film industry, and shootings and movie releases being affected all over, many movies have taken the route of a direct OTT release rather than theatrical release, and this has been creating issues in the industry.

After the recent announcement of OTT release of Tamil movie Ponmagal Vandhaal starring Jyothika on Amazon prime, yesterday Bollywood movie Gulabo Sitabo starring Ayushmann Khurrana and Amitabh Bachchan announced its direct release on Amazon prime on June 12.

Condemning this direct OTT release, the popular INOX group of theatres has released a strong statement. The statement reads "STATEMENT BY INOX ON A PRODUCTION HOUSE'S ANNOUNCEMENT TO RELEASE THEIR MOVIE ON AN OTT PLATFORM BY SKIPPING THE THEATRICAL RUN

14th May, 2020. INOX would like to express extreme displeasure and disappointment on an announcement made by a production house today, to release the, movie directly on an OTT platform by skipping the theatrical window run. The decision of the production house to deviate from the globally prevalent content windowing practice is alarming and disconcerting.
Cinemas and content creators have always been into mutually beneficial partnerships, where one's action provided fillip to anothers revenues. INOX has been investing profoundly towards adding world class quality screens, across the country, only to provide more eyeballs to the great content being produced. This partnership has endured for decades, and has provided succour to each other. In these troubled tirnes, it is disturbing to see one of the partners not interested in continuing the mutually beneficial relationship, especially when the need of the hour is to stand shoulder to shoulder with each other, and bring the film industry back to its vibrant best.

Such acts, though isolated, vitiate the atmosphere of mutual partnership and paint these content producers as fair-weather friends rather than all-weather life-long partners. Needless to say, INOX will be constrained to examine its options, and reserves all rights, including taking retributive measures, in dealing with such fair-weather friends.

INOX would the to reiterate that as the backbone of the cinematic value chain, this windowing pattern has done wonders in terms of revenues for the content creators and all other stakeholders, as it offers them the opportunity to extract the best from all available mediurns, which include cinemas, OTT platforms as well as satellite.

INOX would like to urge all content creators not to skip the theatrical run, and stay with the age old and established windowing pattem, which is in the best interests of all stakeholders in the value chain.”