Indian films may not have managed to get wide theatrical releases. Either at home or abroad due to pandemic-led lockdowns. over the last two years. They are now finding an audience on over-the-top (OTT) video streaming platforms.

Tiger Shroff’s action film Heropanti 2 will stream on Amazon Prime Video starting on 27 May. The film co-starring Tara Sutaria directed by Ahmed Khan had released in cinemas for Eid this April and made ₹24.45 crores at the box office.

Sports drama ‘83 that had clocked 3.1 million hours of viewing. It is at last count and made it to Netflix’s top 10 non-English films worldwide. That found viewers in Africa, Kuwait, Sri Lanka, and other countries after it premiered in late March.

On ZEE5, Salman Khan-starrer Radhe. Your Most Wanted Bhai and Telugu action-drama Bangarraju won eyeballs in Australia, the US, and the United Arab Emirates. Media experts said most users turned to OTT platforms in the absence of other forms of entertainment.

Some of these films saw their theatrical releases disrupted owing to different covid waves. While ’83 was released in late December, right before the third wave, Bangarraju saw only limited showcasing over the Pongal weekend in January when restrictions were being re-imposed. The world was still reeling under the impact of the second wave when Khan’s Radhe had released for Eid last year. “Movies drive strong traction for us in global markets across both viewership and subscriptions. With the huge diaspora in the US, UK, UAE, and multiple language affinities, we see a strong surge during new movie releases in these markets including for Bengali, Telugu, Punjabi, and Tamil titles,” Archana Anand, chief business officer, ZEE5 Global had said in an earlier interview.