Half-finished films, cancelled releases, derelict theatres, careworn studios, a desperate workforce scraping together a living—the pandemic sucked the breathing life out of Bollywood in 2020. The annus horribilis spread its stain with the nationwide lockdown, when everything went into a catatonic state, and held on to its ghastly inertia. The financial losses for the Hindi film industry were monumental: hundreds of crores of rupees. Digital platforms such as Amazon Prime Video and Netflix emerged as viable, ‘at-home’ options, but could scarcely fill the void.
Movie aficionados had to wait, then wait some more, for the industry to resurrect. For the majority, the joy of watching a new movie on the small screen in the living room couldn’t just compare with the frisson of expectation, even mystique, of a darkened auditorium when the lights go out. Big filmmakers and actors such as Shoojit Sarkar, Mahesh Bhatt, Akshay Kumar and David Dhawan did release films on OTT platforms, but Gulabo Sitabo, Sadak 2, Lakshmi or Coolie No....
