Vivek Agnihotri asks why Shahid Kapoor’s Bloody Daddy, made at Rs 200 cr budget, is streaming for free: ‘Bollywood is celebrating its own destruction’

Shahid Kapoor‘s Bloody Daddy has started streaming on Jio Cinema app on Friday (June 9). The action thriller is directed by ace filmmaker Ali Abbas Zafar. While the film has opened to mixed reviews from film critics, The Kashmir Files director Vivek Agnihotri has questioned why, the film, that is reportedly made on a budget of Rs 200 crores, streaming on the app for free.

Agnihotri took to Twitter on Friday to share a newspaper commercial of the Shahid Kapoor starrer and said that it is sad “Bollywood is celebrating its own destruction“.

Why would anyone show a 200 cr film for free? What’s this insane business model?

Sad news is that Bollywood is celebrating its own destruction. pic.twitter.com/OcpQyfgCEE

— Vivek Ranjan Agnihotri (@vivekagnihotri) June 9, 2023

Responding to Vivek’s tweet, a person offered an explanation on why the film has launched on the streaming app for free, stating, “This is Jio’s business model. They’ll give everything free for few/several months to increase the customer base. Later they’ll start charging minimal fee to retain the customers. Soon other OTT platforms too will have no option but to charge less to customers and generate revenue thru ads instead. OTT, supposed to be an add free platform, will too turn into TV.” To this, Vivek replied, “So, in a way this ₹200 crore is their advertising cost?”

Bloody Daddy, helmed by Ali Abbas Zafar, who has earlier made films like Tiger Zinda Hai and Sultan, is a remake of French movie Sleepless Night (2011). The film marks Shahid’s second OTT project, first being his hugely successful web-series Farzi by Raj and DK which also starred Vijay Sethupathi, Amol Palekar and Rashi Khanna.

While both the makers and the actor have not commented on their take on the film being streamed for free, the actor- director duo had earlier spoken about how their film was best suited for OTT. The filmmaker also shared that Bloody Daddy needed a digital platform to tell the story honestly.

 

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“Content is evolving and in the past three years, we have all seen how audiences’ preferences have changed. Also, when you make content for OTT, it’s a bigger responsibility to mount it at a larger scale, at international level, as people across would be watching it. The budgets today are big and one can create a similar movie experience, to be consumed on one’s own devices. As for Bloody Daddy, the film deals with drugs, blood, and gore, and it was important that we kept it on the same ground. We didn’t want to tamper it to suit it for theatres, and thus decided to have a direct-to-digital release,” Ali said at the film’s trailer launch in Mumbai last month.

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However, Shahid added that both OTT and theatres will continue to be part of the same ecosystem and not clash with one another. As artists and creators, he also added that the energies can be divided. He said, “While watching content at home is a more personal experience, theatre will continue to be an event for families. Both will have their own phase. For content creators, there are more avenues to choose from, and they just need to know which platform they should take their content to, and then work towards it. Everyone has been telling us how our film could have been in theatres, it’s slick and cool. Even exhibitors called us, wanting it but we had truly envisioned Bloody Daddy on a digital platform. It was created for OTT.”