Dispelling rumours around the much-awaited release of Vijay and Vijay Sethupathi’s Master, the film’s producers have clarified that the film will hit the theatres before being released on any Over The Top (OTT) streaming platform. The clarification came after speculations were rife about the film’s rights being sold to an OTT platform by the makers, thus ruling out a theatrical release.
According to a press statement issued by XB Film Creators and Seven Screen Studio, the producers were indeed approached by an OTT platform. “Though we have an offer from a reputed OTT service provider, we prefer the theatrical release, which is the need of the hour for the industry to survive the ongoing crisis,” the statement said. However, the statement did not confirm the release date of the film, which is expected to be during January 2021, in time for the Pongal festival.
A Lokesh Kanagaraj directorial, Master was set for release in April 2019, but was postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Since then, there have been rumours about a possible release on OTT platforms like Netflix or Amazon Prime Video. The rumours became more pronounced after Suriya’s Soorarai Pottru was announced to premiere on Amazon Prime Video.
However, the producer of Master put an end to these rumours a few months ago and assured fans that the film will have a theatrical release whenever the situation around the pandemic comes back to normal. “Vijay sir is very clear that the release should be only after theatres open. Whether it will be released for Deepavali or after that depends on when the theatres are reopening,” he had said in an interview. He also said that it is impossible for such a huge project to be released in OTT first and added, “Vijay has said that the release can wait till theatres reopen. So the mentality is clear. I am not sure how the rumours of an OTT release came. These are movies with huge investment and hence it is not clear how it is possible to do an OTT release first.”
The film’s teaser was released recently on YouTube. The 91-second long teaser has garnered over 40 million views on the video streaming website, announced XB Film Creations, the film’s producers. Immediately after its release, the teaser hit 10 million views in just 1 hour and 18 minutes. The teaser has so far broken several records on YouTube.
Apart from Vijay and Vijay Sethupathi, the film has Malavika Mohanan as the leading lady. It also has Arjun Das, Andrea Jeremiah, Shanthanu Bhagyaraj and Nasser among its star-studded cast. Anirudh Ravichander has scored the music for the film while Sathyan Sooryan has taken care of the cinematography.