Sushant Singh Rajput starrer Dil Bechara released on July 24, on OTT platform Disney+Hotstar. The platform, recently, registered record-breaking viewership number for the premiere. An independent tracking firms revealed that the premiere received around 95 million views within 24 hours of release.
According to a report by Mid-day, a representative for the firm, Ormax Media, believes that the comparison of viewership of the movie can be done with HBO original Game of Thrones. Although, no further details were shared. “If one wants to, comparisons could be drawn [between the viewership] of Dil Bechara, and that of [the much-acclaimed series] Game of Thrones, and this was possible even though the latter had a pre-existing viewer-base, while the film [did not]. Then again, Hotstar promoted Dil Bechara from the onset, marketing its release date and time well in advance. Viewers showed up in unison to watch it.”
If it were to be compared with the theatrical release, which is not possible, the movie would have opened with Rs 2000 crore as per the recent price of the tickets.
Trade analyst Taran Adarsh told Mid-Day that the film would’ve done exceedingly well in theatres, too. “I would have preferred watching it on the big screen. It is beautiful, especially its ending. A good film will always find appreciation; [as it did with] films like Anand [1971], and Ankhiyon Ke Jharokhon Se [1978], which also had similar emotional content,” he said.
Other OTT platforms like Netflix announced that Extraction, the Chris Hemsworth action film, got around 99 million views. It is the highest number of views for an original film. On the other hand, the last season of Game of Thrones is said to have received around 44 million views per episode. This statistics belongs to US only.