Mohanlal’s Thudarum release delayed due to lacklustre OTT deal? Tharun Moorthy clarifies | Exclusive

Director Tharun Moorthy’s upcoming Mohanlal film Thudarum was widely expected to be the superstar’s first release of 2025, and fans were hoping it would give a good start to the year considering the disappointment of 2024. However, the movie, which was reported to release on January 30, will now not make it to theatres on that date, which has been taken up by Basil Joseph’s Ponman and Vineeth Sreenivasan’s Oru Jaathi Jathakam.

Speculations have been rife about why the film, which also has Shobana in the lead, was pushed – including the lack of interest for OTT rights for a Mohanlal film as well as the team mulling a direct OTT release.

Tharun Moorthy explains Mohanlal’s Thudarum release ‘not delayed’

In an exclusive chat with OTTplay, Tharun tells us, “Honestly, we never confirmed a release date; so, this narrative of it being pushed doesn’t hold true. What happened is that Aashirvad Cinemas, which is distributing the film, had announced five films including Thudarum in an event and they had said it would be out on January 30. We were also hoping that but by January first week itself, we knew it might not be possible. But fans and others took that as the date, and that’s what has led to these reports.” Incidentally, earlier this month, Mohanlal fans had even begun advance bookings for Thudarum special shows for January 30, even though the theatres weren't finalised.

Ask him if it had to do with the OTT rights of Thudarum not fetching the price that the makers were hoping for, and the filmmaker says that he wouldn’t be the right person to answer that. “What I can confirm is that the film was never meant for a direct-to-OTT release. It’s made entirely for a theatrical experience and that’s what we are planning as well,” he says.

Also read: Thudarum is an emotional film: Mohanlal on reuniting with Shobana in Tharun Moorthy movie

Are reports of Thudarum now being pushed to April or May 2025 true? “Again, as of now, no release date has been planned,” says Tharun, adding that the team has completed almost the entire post-production of the film. “Only, the final mixing and censoring of the film is left, which we want to do closer to its release.”

Thudarum OTT rights, the reason for delay?

Meanwhile, a source close to the producer of Thudarum, on condition of anonymity, tells us that the team was informed by the various streaming platforms that they had approached that it was the final financial quarter for the companies. “They weren’t willing to shell so much money on not just Thudarum, but any Malayalam film at this juncture. They had apprised the team of the concerns as well as their year-end plans. They would be more open for it at the start of the next financial year,” says the source.

This will mean that Mohanlal’s first release of 2025 will now be the much-anticipated L2: Empuraan, which also has Prithviraj Sukumaran, Tovino Thomas, Manju Warrier and Indrajith Sukumaran reprising their roles from Lucifer. The movie will hit theatres in multiple languages globally on March 27, 2025. Mohanlal's latest release Barroz has begun streaming on Disney+ Hotstar from January 22.

Also read: Tovino Thomas on Prithviraj Sukumaran’s L2 Empuraan: 'It gave me a chance to do things I rarely get to' | Exclusive