Epic: First Semester’s tough run has continued on OTT. After crashing at the box office, the Anand Deverakonda and Vaishnavi Chaitanya film could not even reach 1 million views on Netflix in its opening weekend, and it failed to make the global Top 10 of non-English films.
Missing From the Global Chart
Netflix’s global Top 10 non-English films list for the week of October 5 to 11 shows how far behind Epic stood. The No.10 film on the chart, the Malayalam film Pradhama Drishtiya Kuttakkar, recorded 1.1 million views. Epic did not make the list at all, which means it stayed below that mark.
For comparison, Soori’s Mandaadi, which arrived on Netflix the same week, recorded 2.2 million views and ranked No.3 globally. Reporting Live, another Indian release, came in at No.6 with 1.6 million views.
No.6 in India, But Driven by Trolls
Epic did manage to enter Netflix’s Top 10 Movies chart in India at No.6. But that number has more to do with curiosity than love for the film. After its OTT release on October 9, Epic became the target of heavy trolling on social media, with memes, clips and harsh comments going viral. Many viewers watched it just to see what the noise was about.
Despite that buzz, it could not convert the attention into the kind of numbers that put a film on the global chart.
The OTT Hope That Did Not Work
After the theatrical failure, the team, especially director Aditya Hasan, had hoped the film would find its audience on OTT. The reason was simple: Epic is the continuation of the hit web series #90’s: A Middle Class Biopic, whose audience was largely on digital platforms.
Netflix even released the film in five languages, Telugu, Tamil, Hindi, Kannada and Malayalam, giving it a much wider reach than its theatrical run. But the numbers show that the bigger reach did not translate into a bigger audience.
A Disconnect From Its Own Fans
The main reason seems to be that Epic moved too far from what made #90’s special. The series worked because of its simple, middle-class emotions. Epic shifted the story to London and turned it into a college romance, and fans of the original did not connect with that change.
With failure in theatres and a weak response on OTT, the planned follow-up, Epic: Final Semester, now looks very unlikely.
