Should Netflix, Prime Video Rely on Big Stars or Great Content?

OTT platforms have had a mixed bag of a year.

Over the last year, the three major streaming platforms, Amazon Prime Video, Netflix and Hotstar have had a slew of Indian releases. Both Netflix and Hotstar have had more duds this year than successes. A lot of the shows and films on Netflix and Hotstar, that were hyped or had big names, failed to make a mark but the smaller ones left an impression.

However, Prime Video has managed to create a variety of content, collaborating with filmmakers like Zoya Akhtar and Raj Nidimoru and Krishna DK to create an interesting buffet of shows.

Netflix Leaning On Stars?

There’s no real way to gauge how these shows or films on OTT platforms are doing, because no data is provided by the streaming giant. But based on social media buzz and critical reception, quite a few Netflix shows and films have missed the mark. Bard of Blood starring Emraan Hashmi, Chopsticks with Abhay Deol and Mithila Palkar, Dharma Production’s Drive and most recently Ghost Stories. All these have big names associated with them. The Ghost Stories anthology had Karan Johar, Zoya Akhtar, Anurag Kashyap and Dibakar Banerjee coming together.

But do these names translate into great quality? A report by Ormax in 2019 shows that the most-liked show of the year, based on word-of-mouth was actually Prime Video’s The Family Man. Even amongst the two shows from Netflix on the list, Delhi Crime seems to have been liked a lot more than Bard of Blood and Sacred Games 2.

Delhi Crime starred Shefali Shah and Rasika Dugal, who are extremely credible actors but not massive stars. But the taut writing and direction by creator Richie Mehta has made it one of the most acclaimed shows of the year. The other film that was widely acclaimed was Soni, starring newcomers Geetika Vidya Ohlan and Saloni Batra. This was a film that barely had any promotion or big names, but received glowing reviews.

Towards the end of 2019, Netflix also released a list of their 10 most-watched shows and films in India, out of which 7 were their originals. But this data can be misleading because according to a report, Netflix bases it on accounts that spent at least ‘2 minutes’ watching their film or series in the first 28 days of its release.

Now Netflix is known to widely market their shows with massive campaigns and junkets which generate buzz. A show like Bard of Blood, headlined by Emraan Hashmi and produced by Shah Rukh Khan, creates curiosity because eventually, Bollywood does sell. But post that the show received a fair amount of hate on social media. Similarly, the second season of Sacred Games tops Netflix’s list, but had an underwhelming response critically.

Prime Video Gets It Right?

It’s not like all the content on Prime Video has been of excellent quality though. They’ve had shows like Four More Shots Please! and Mirzapur which have had a mixed response critically. But they’ve balanced it with shows of great quality like Made In Heaven and The Family Man. The creative force behind Made In Heaven was Zoya Akhtar, but the actors Sobhita Dhulipala and Arjun Mathur were relatively unknown. In fact, the show has now made stars out of them. Made In Heaven, set in a posh South Delhi world, benefited from excellent writing.

Prime Video also knows how to separate its content. They will have more ‘mainstream’ content like Inside Edge or Guns N Roses (which seems like another version of Splitsvilla), but they’ve also invested in Kabir Khan’s The Forgotten Army. The show has been in the making for three years and has been mounted on a massive scale, based on the men and women in the Indian National Army led by Subhas Chandra Bose.

Content Triumphs Hype

Hotstar has the highest reach in India with 300 million viewers and two of their originals, Hostages and Criminal Justice, featured on Ormax’s most liked shows list as well. Criminal Justice an adaptation of the original starring Vikrant Massey and Pankaj Tripathi, generated a good amount of buzz on social media and got positive reviews. But the Hindi adaptation of The Office, which was hyped massively (also because of the popularity of the original), was panned by critics and rejected by audiences.

The digital medium also probably works like the movies - in the sense that a major Bollywood actor will bring in the eyeballs. But eventually content will triumph, and one sees that in all the shows that have been appreciated. Even when Manoj Bajpayee’s The Family Man released there wasn’t too much chatter about it. Then the glowing reviews began to pour in, and the show was appreciated for its combination of humour and thrills. Following which, there was social media buzz and the show is number one on Ormax’s 2019 report. Prime Video also has an advantage of having several regional films that have given it an edge over the others.

In 2019, Netflix tied up with Karan Johar’s Dharma Productions to create content for the platform. The first of which was the disappointing Drive. For the next year they have also tied up with other big names in Bollywood like Anushka Sharma, Shah Rukh Khan, Neena and Masaba Gupta. Anushka will be producing Mai and Bulbul for them.

So the subscription rate for Prime Video for a year is Rs 999, and watching a film in a theatre comes to at least Rs 400 per head, if you include the frills of buying popcorn and a drink. Which is why it doesn’t really matter if a web series is devoid of a big star because people are willing to give good content a chance when watching it at home, and at their convenience.

Netflix has produced some very high-quality shows and films in their international offerings with Dark, Bird Box, Stranger Things and many others. But unfortunately not enough clutter-breaking content that pushes the envelope for filmmaking and stories, has come out of India in 2019.

The Indian audience that accesses platforms like Hotstar, Netflix and Amazon Prime Video are watching international content on these platforms too. Which is why they need a solidly crafted film or series, versus one with big names.

Yes, Shah Rukh Khan in a web series would pique my curiosity, but what after that? Watching OTT content is a more intimate experience than watching a film in the theatre, it doesn’t need to be a spectacle. It needs to hold your attention and hopefully, make you go back to it again and again.