Salman Khan starrer Radhe has had a slow start with only around $1.3 million box office collection within the first two days, including $875,000 from the Gulf markets.

One of the biggest Bollywood films so far this year, the Salman Khan-starrer was released simultaneously in theatres worldwide and on streaming service Zee5 - for its premium subscribers - along with Zee’s pay-per-view service ZeePlex for ₹249, and DTH services as the studio adopted a hybrid release strategy amid the Covid-19 pandemic when cinemas are shut down.

In this new normal when many big budget movies are being moved to OTT, multiple factors may define the commercial success of the film.

“OTT platforms measure the success of new properties based on number of accounts that streamed the content and number of new paid subscribers gained,” said Shailesh Kapoor, Founder & CEO, Ormax Media, a media consulting firm.

As per Ormax estimates, Radhe has garnered seven-nine million views in the first two days with 4.2 million views across platforms on the first day.

“This makes it the third-most watched online film, after Dil Bechara and Laxmii . Dil Bechara benefited from the Sushant Singh Rajput factor, and also because it was offered free by Disney+ Hotstar,” according to Kapoor.

According to Ormax estimates, Dil Bechara had clocked over 75 million viewers. While Laxmii , another major movie released in 2020 on Disney+ Hotstar, had garnered cumulative views of around 20-25 million. As per the firm’s estimates, the top four big releases on OTT during the Covid-19 pandemic are Dil Bechara, Laxmii, Coolie No. 1 and Radhe , in that order.

But online views do not indicate how much revenue the platform made. According to Jehil Thakkar, Partner, Deloitte India, “The pay-per-view model is still very much in a ‘build mode’ in India. It is not commonly used.”

Low rating

In terms of popular reviews, however, Radhe has not performed well. The film has received an IMDB rating of 1.9 out of 10 based on over 66,000 reviews, becoming the second lowest-rated film for Khan.

According to a trade website BoxOfficeIndia, the film’s overseas collection stood around $1.3 million within the first two days. Khan’s previous releases in 2019, Dabangg 3 made $4 million and Bharat , $6.25 million on the opening day.

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