Throughout his career, Aamir Khan has often been a game-changer in the Hindi film industry. For instance, he was the first leading star to do only one film at a time back in the early 2000s and the first producer/actor to come up with innovative marketing strategies to position his movies in the late 2000s. Now, as per a report in Pinkvilla, he has taken yet another strategic decision as a producer – he won't sell digital rights of his upcoming movie as long as they're still running in cinemas.

What's Aamir Khan's new move?

“Aamir doesn’t want to pre-sell the digital rights of his films. His vision is to revive the social comedy genre by keeping it exclusive for the big screen for at least 12 weeks," the report states a source as saying.

“He will sell the digital rights only after the release of the film in the cinema halls. While the digital medium is keeping the box-office clause in the contract, Aamir is willing to sell and value his film based on the audience reception to the content on theatrical release," the source added, as per the report.

Why is Aamir making this move?

While major exhibitors in India already have a clause of keeping an 8-week window between the theatrical release and the digital release of all Hindi films, Aamir has gone one step further. This seems to be the lesson he's learnt from the fate of his latest production, ex-wife Kiran Rao's dramedy Laapataa Ladies. The film, co-produced by Kiran and Jio Studios, released in cinemas on March 1 after an extensive festival run and marketing campaign across India.

However, the film failed to find too many takers back then. However, once it was released on Netflix India 8 weeks later, on April 26, the viewers lapped it up. PVR INOX Managing Director Ajay Bijli said in an interview with Film Companion that the reason why Laapataa Ladies didn't work in cinemas was because of a “marketing issue.” The film prominently displayed the logo of Netflix on all its publicity material, possibly giving potential viewers the impression that it might release on Netflix soon, which is why they chose to give the film a miss in theatres.

The 12th Fail case

The PVR head also claimed that he was surprised that Laapataa Ladies didn't work well because they positioned it the same way as the sleeper hit from last year, Vidhu Vinod Chopra's underdog tale 12th Fail, starring Vikrant Massey. In the post-release promotions of that film, Vidhu revealed that he didn't sell the digital rights of the film because he wanted people to watch it in theatres. Weeks after running successfully in cinemas, 12th Fail's digital deal was finally cracked, post which it dropped on Disney+ Hotstar. Even after the digital release, it continued to perform decently at the domestic box office.

Aamir also attempted this move earlier with his 2022 production, Advait Chandan's epic Laal Singh Chaddha, which starred him and Kareena Kapoor in lead roles. During the pre-release promotions, Aamir claimed that his film would release on a digital platform only six months after its theatrical release, thus tempting viewers to watch it in cinemas. However, once the film failed at the box office, it dropped just 8 weeks after the theatrical release (August 11, 2022) on October 6, 2022. It received a positive response upon its streaming release.

Aamir has notably enrolled Aparna Purohit, former Head of Originals for India and Southeast Asia at Prime Video, as the chief at his production house. Aamir also claimed in a recent podcast that he's amping up his role as a producer in the coming years. The slate of Aamir Khan Productions includes RS Prasanna's Sitaare Zameen Par, starring Aamir and Genelia D'Souza (slated to release this Christmas), Rajkumar Santoshi's period drama Lahore 1947, starring Sunny Deol and Preity Zinta in lead roles, and Sunil Pandey's yet-untitled romantic drama, starring Aamir's elder son Junaid Khan, which will also mark South actor Sai Pallavi's Bollywood debut.