
The Ministry of Home Affairs released nationwide Unlock 3 guidelines yesterday, which opened up some more activities outside the containment zones, but cinema halls along with other places still remain shut. The guideline further revealed that the restriction on cinema halls will remain in place till August 31.
The entertainment industry has been hit hard by the four-month-long COVID-19 lockdown. As shoots for several films have already begun and with cinema halls still getting no-go from the government, more and more production houses are going to take the second possibility, which is the digital OTT release. The trend started with Amitabh Bachchan and Ayushmann’s starrer Gulabo Sitabo which was released on Amazon Prime.
Meanwhile, Disney+Hotstar have lined up seven new releases which include Laxmmi Bomb (Akshay Kumar and Kiara Advani), Bhuj: The Pride of India (Ajay Devgn, Sonakshi Sinha and Sanjay Dutt), Sadak 2 (Alia Bhatt, Aditya Roy Kapur and Pooja Bhatt), The Big Bull (Abhishek Bachchan), Khuda Haafiz (Vidyut Jammwal) and Lootcase (Kunal Kemmu and Rasika Dugal). Other OTT platforms like Netflix have also bought digital rights of Janhvi Kapoor-starrer ‘Gunjan Saxena: The Kargil Girl’.