As the future of theatrical releases seems bleak amid the COVID-19 lockdown, Anushka Shetty and Ranganathan Madhavan starrer Nishabdam is likely to be released on OTT platforms. Highly placed sources said that the movie makers are in talks with the Amazon Prime Video for the online release of the movie and are expected to arrive at a conclusion in less than a week.
Around Rs 35 crore were spent on the making of the movie; negotiations are on with Amazon over the final price at which the rights will be sold to the company, the source said. The movie makers are willing to release the movie if they even get a marginal profit over the actual movie budget, the source added.
Movie makers are in a tough spot as they are bearing the burden of the interest on the loan taken to finish the movie, sources said. While they can repay the loan following the release of the movie, the accruing interests are pushing them to release the movie online as soon as possible.
The final copy of the movie is still in production and makers are working on the post-production, which was delayed due to the lockdown.
Under the direction of Hemant Madhukar, Nishabdam (Silence) is coming out as a multilingual thriller in Telugu, Tamil, Hindi, Malayalam and English. The movie was supposed to be released on April 2, 2020 according to its officially scheduled date on the movie posters, however the release got indefinitely delayed due to the lockdown.
Nishabdam has already released the trailer which has received good response from the audience. In the movie Anushka would be seen in the role of Sakshi, a mute artist.
Earlier, Amazon Prime Video has announced that six highly-anticipated Indian films will be premiering directly on the streaming service – Anu Menon’s Shakuntala Devi with Vidya Balan in lead, legal drama Ponmagal Vandhal starring Jyotika in addition to Keerthy Suresh starrer Penguin (Tamil and Telugu), Sufiyum Sujatayum (Malayalam), Law (Kannada) and French Biryani (Kannada). The movies will premiere exclusively on Prime Video over the next three months.