Chennai: Four weeks in cinemas, then straight home. Rajinikanth's Jailer 2 arrived on Prime Video on Thursday in Tamil, Telugu, Hindi, Malayalam and Kannada.
The film opened in theatres on October 15. The platform has kept the full 2-hour-43-minute theatrical cut rather than an edited version. Streaming rights are reported at around ₹160 crore, a record for Tamil cinema, though Prime Video has not confirmed the figure.
Nelson Dilipkumar directs, and Rajinikanth returns as the retired jailer Tiger Muthuvel Pandian, whose quiet life is broken when his family is targeted. This time a gang out for revenge over a slain associate and a missing haul of valuables reaches his family.
The cast includes Mohanlal as Mathew, Vijay Sethupathi, Shivarajkumar, S.J. Suryah, Hrithik Roshan, Vidya Balan, Mithun Chakraborty, Ramya Krishnan and Yogi Babu. Anirudh Ravichander scores the music, and Sun Pictures produces.
The week's slate is crowded. Meghna Gulzar's Daayra, with Kareena Kapoor Khan and Prithviraj Sukumaran, arrives on Netflix on November 13, as does Vijay Deverakonda and Rashmika Mandanna's Ranabaali, set in Rayalaseema during the Madras famine of the 1870s. Karan Johar's Student of the Year: After Dark lands on JioHotstar, Pankaj Tripathi and Aditi Rao Hydari's Parivarik ManuRanjan on SonyLIV, and the Malayalam film Bandra on ZEE5, all on November 13.
The four-week window is the number worth watching. A Rajinikanth film moving to streaming inside a month sets the benchmark for how long a big Tamil title can hold an exclusive run. And for a household that missed the theatre run, there is no longer a wait for a dubbed television premiere.
Next: whether that window shrinks further, which the deals on the next big Tamil release will show.