Mark Antony on OTT: All you need to know about Vishal's blockbuster sci-fi drama

After a successful theatrical campaign, Tamil star Vishal's latest movie Mark Antony is getting ready to arrive on the streaming platform soon. Amazon Prime Video has confirmed the digital premiere date for the movie, which also stars SJ Suryah as one of the leads.

Mark Antony will become available for streaming on the platform starting October 13, less than four weeks after its theatrical release.

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It has become a common practice in the South Indian film industry to release new movies on OTT platforms within five weeks of their box office debut.

Mark Antony's theatrical success

While the stakeholders in the Hindi film industry don't approve of this strategy, it seems to be working wonders for South cinema. Take, for example, Mark Antony. The movie earned more than Rs 100 crore from its global earnings within 25 days of its release in cinemas.

Mark Antony became one of the biggest hits in Vishal's career, spanning about two decades. It's his first movie to join the elite Rs 100 crore club in the Indian film industry. While the movie has earned Rs 82 crore from its ticket sales in India alone, it has collected more than Rs 18 crore from overseas.

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Many expressed doubt about the potential of Mark Antony to become a hit at the box office. The conventional wisdom was that the movie that follows a huge blockbuster might not draw a large audience to cinemas as people would have exhausted all their disposable income on the earlier movie. Mark Antony defied that logic as it was released after two consecutive hits at the Tamil Nadu box office : Superstar Rajinikanth's Jailer and Shah Rukh Khan's Jawan.

The success of Mark Antony showed the enduring appeal of commercial cinema, even as the film industry faced a huge disruption with the advent of the OTT platforms and the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Mark Antony's plot and cast

Based on the trailer, Mark Antony revolves around a time-travelling device. Writer-director Adhik Ravichandran has filled the movie with a strong sense of nostalgia by incorporating some of the biggest pop cultural references of Tamil cinema. The period portion showing Vishal and SJ Suryah as eccentric gangsters seems to be the movie's mainstay. Adhik has generously used hit songs and references to movie stars like Silk Smitha of the bygone era to maximise the movie's entertainment.

Besides Vishal and SJ Suryah, Mark Antony also has Suneel, Selvaraghavan, Ritu, Abhinaya, Kingsley and Y.G.Mahendran in the supporting cast.