The simultaneous box office failures of Maa, Maalik, and Aankhon Ki Gustaakhiyan are a wake-up call for Bollywood’s OTT-bred directors and the industry’s misplaced faith in streaming credentials.
Despite robust casts and ambitious concepts, all three films crashed, collectively losing around ₹80 crore for distributors—a staggering sum that exposes a fundamental misunderstanding of the theatrical medium.
The core issue is the directors’ inability to shed their OTT storytelling habits.
Streaming platforms reward patience, slow-burn narratives, and meandering character arcs.
But the big screen demands immediacy, spectacle, and emotional impact.
Vishal Furia’s Maa started as a supernatural thriller but devolved into preachy mythological exposition, abandoning the horror that audiences expected.
Pulkit’s Maalik wasted Rajkummar Rao’s powerhouse performance in a generic, uninspired gangster world, offering nothing new to the genre.
Santosh Singh’s Aankhon Ki Gustaakhiyan was the worst offender—a film that felt like a web series episode awkwardly stretched to feature length, with underdeveloped characters and zero narrative urgency.
These failures are not just about box office numbers; they’re about a creative crisis.
The directors failed to recognize the difference in scale and audience expectation between OTT and cinema.
Their films lacked cinematic instinct, visual ambition, and the kind of moments that make theatrical experiences memorable.
Until Bollywood’s OTT graduates learn to recalibrate for the big screen, their films will keep sinking—and the industry will keep paying the price
