The one major thing that differentiates OTT and theatrical releases is the absence of numbers. There’s no box office online, and the entire focus is on the kind of content. So then, what defines a hit project on the web? No data gets released regarding the number of viewers as well.

Filmmaker Shakun Batra, whose film Gehraiyaan released directly on an OTT platform, had told us earlier, “I have the same question. Given how the industry is moving forward, we will have to define a new metric of success for films on OTT. Now, it is generally word of mouth like, ‘Oh a lot of people watched it’. I wouldn’t be surprised if we soon get metrics [for web space] that can be compared.”

For now, however, that seems unlikely. And actors are only too happy that people will watch something not just based on the hype around how much money it has earned. Actor Maanvi Gagroo, who has done popular web shows, such as Tripling and Four More Shots Please! (both have third seasons coming up), shares, “I have to rely on audience reactions to know whether my show has worked or not. And that’s a big change that social media has brought about. Earlier, there were very few avenues, and we’d get to interact with our viewers only through middlemen. Now, I can talk directly to people, though it’s still filtered.”

Mozez Singh, who directed the medical thriller Human, says they do get access to internal data through the OTT platform, but it’s never released. “I can just can say that the amount of people who reached out to me, the way they reacted to it... it was utterly overwhelming. I never experienced such adulation for my work, so I can call it a hit,” he tells us.

There have been instances where makers had allegedly fudged box office numbers to show inflated figures for their films. So, Sharib Hashmi feels things are more “transparent” on web. The actor, who has done popular OTT shows such as Asur and The Family Man, adds, “The reactions on social media are enough to know how well a project is doing. It’s better than any numbers... No talk about collections is good. Hit ya no hit, baat kaam ki hoti hai.”

Rasika Dugal concurs as she states, “The audience is very smart today. They know what they like and what they don’t. It’s encouraging to see that they watch [something for] the content and don’t focus on anything else. That’s what makes a project hit on this medium.”