Karthi has had a rough year at the box office, and it’s showing up in an unusual place, how fast his films are leaving theatres for streaming. Vaa Vaathiyaar, which released for Pongal, made it to Prime Video in just 14 days. Sardar 2, which came out more recently, is following an even shorter path, arriving on the same platform on October 1, just 21 days after release.
Both films landed among the year’s biggest disappointments, pulling in a negligible theatrical share despite the scale they were mounted on. South Indian cinema has typically stuck to a four week OTT window as the norm, giving films a full month to recover ground in theatres before moving to streaming. Karthi’s last two releases haven’t come close to that runway, both cut noticeably shorter, a pattern that usually only happens when a film’s theatrical business dries up fast enough that holding the OTT date back stops making financial sense.
Interestingly, both films have ended up on the same streaming home, Prime Video, which also tracks with how these deals tend to get structured, a single OTT partner picking up a star’s output across a stretch of releases. For Karthi, two films landing in the same bracket back to back turns what might have been a one-off into something closer to a trend worth watching heading into his next release.
Primary keyword: Karthi films OTT release window 2026
Secondary keywords: Vaa Vaathiyaar Prime Video 14 days, Sardar 2 OTT release October 1, Karthi Sardar 2 Prime Video
