Zee Entertainment Enterprises has announced a pay-per-view movie service it calls ‘Zee Plex’. Zee Plex will launch in both TV and Zee’s OTT platform Zee5. The company has partnered with Dish D2H, Tata Sky, and Airtel Digital TV for this initiative.
With Zee Plex, you will have to book before watching movies, like we do when we visit cinema halls. The service will be available round the clock at various intervals throughout the day. You will also be able to book shows before the release date.
Zee has not revealed the pricing of Zee Plex just yet. However, in a press release, the company said that the prices will be ‘attractive’. Zee Plex will officially launch in the country on the 2nd of October. It’s noteworthy that services such as Tata Sky have tried the pay per view model themselves in the past, but it didn’t gain enough traction. It will be interesting to see if there has been a paradigm shift in how the typical Indian viewer consumes content and if they will be willing to use a pay-per-view model to watch the latest movies.
“While we all love to catch the latest movies at the nearest theatres, we sensed the need for a solution like Zee Plex, which gives the consumers flexibility and convenience, to catch their favourite films in the comfort of their homes, along with friends and family,” said Shariq Patel, CEO, Zee Studios in a statement. “We have received great interest from producers and are looking forward to releasing a strong slate of blockbusters across language,” he added.
While pay-to-view models are popular in the U.S, it will be interesting to see if Zee manages to successfully implement such a system in India where people are starting to get accustomed to direct movie releases on OTT platforms like Netflix and Amazon Prime Video, given the lockdown restrictions due to the pandemic.
