From ‘Thamma’ to ‘Dhurandhar’: December opens with a heavyweight entertainment line-up

December may traditionally signal winding down, but for the entertainment business, the month has evolved into a content battleground. With audiences entering peak binge mode and theatres eyeing holiday footfalls, the first week of December has become an unofficial marquee launch slot — where platforms test brand loyalty, studios flex franchise muscle, and viewers are spoilt for choice. Genres collide, platforms compete, and screens — big and small — fill up with horror comedies, K-dramas, comedy specials, thrillers, documentaries and high-voltage theatrical releases. This year is no exception. If anything, the race is louder, faster and more strategically packed, with a slate across OTT and cinemas spanning everything from prestige dramas to reality TV and star-driven action tentpoles.

OTT releases this week

On OTT, Amazon Prime Video leads its India-facing play with Thamma, which premieres on December 2. The film folds Ayushmann Khurrana and Rashmika Mandanna into Maddock’s expanding horror-comedy universe, this time through a journalist lost in a jungle and rescued by Tadaka, a Betaal-like creature. Their forbidden romance puts him up against Nawazuddin Siddiqui’s Yakshasan and a larger supernatural threat. For Prime Video, it ticks several strategic boxes at once: bankable Hindi stars, a familiar genre and a franchise ecosystem viewers already recognise.

The platform’s more serious offering of the week, Bau, Artist at War, also releasing on December 2, pivots to awards-season sensibilities, chronicling Holocaust survivor Joseph Bau’s life, his secret marriage inside a concentration camp and his later testimony against a Nazi officer through the structure of a courtroom drama.

Prime Video also courts global sci-fi fans with Tron: Ares, arriving on December 2, centred on an advanced program entering the real world and triggering a corporate war between ENCOM and Dillinger Systems over Kevin Flynn’s “permanence code.” The platform’s holiday-season positioning is completed by Oh. What. Fun., premiering on December 3, in which Michelle Pfeiffer plays Claire, a Christmas-obsessed matriarch accidentally left behind by her family and forced into a solo festive adventure.

Netflix, meanwhile, is in full portfolio mode. The week starts light on December 2 with Matt Rife: Unwrapped – A Christmas Crowd Work Special, engineered for short-form virality. The streamer’s celebrity lifestyle pipeline gets a royal boost the next day with With Love, Meghan: Holiday Celebration, releasing on December 3. In parallel, Netflix continues its now-standard tradition of December comfort viewing through rom-com My Secret Santa, also launching on December 3.

Beneath that glossy surface, the service is still investing in global genre depth. Western action-drama The Abandons arrives on December 4 and is likely its most ambitious scripted launch of the week. The same day brings the return of the Thai series The Believers: Season 2, while English-language drama I Wish You Had Told Me also drops on December 4. Music documentary Lali: Time to Step Up joins the platform on the same day.

From December 5 onwards, the platform leans heavily into thrillers and prestige non-fiction. Tamil psychological thriller Stephen releases on December 5, about a psychiatrist drawn into the mind of a self-confessed serial killer and a string of missing girls. Korean mystery series The Price of Confession also debuts on December 5. For viewers seeking non-fiction, The New Yorker at 100 releases on December 5, while Owning Manhattan: Season 2 arrives the same day. Holiday sequel The Night My Dad Saved Christmas 2 and South African-set rom-com Love and Wine also join the line-up on December 5.

Beyond the two global majors, Indian platforms are quietly using this week to consolidate their regional positioning. JioHotstar hosts Griffin in Summer on December 2, sitting alongside Architecton, which arrives on December 4. Malayalam psychological horror Dies Irae and police procedural Dhoolpet Police Station release on December 5 across JioHotstar and Aha. ZEE5’s The Great Pre Wedding Show and Gharwali Pedwali also debut on December 5, while SunNXT’s Arasayyana Prema Prasanga and SonyLIV’s Kuttram Purindhavan join the same day. Reality TV continues to be the engine for live engagement, with Bigg Boss 19 inching towards its grand finale on December 7.

In theatres this week

If OTT is about breadth and segmentation, the theatrical market this week is more focused. In Hindi, the box-office conversation revolves almost entirely around Dhurandhar, which releases in cinemas on December 5. Directed by Aditya Dhar and led by Ranveer Singh, the spy-action drama sends an Indian intelligence officer into Karachi’s Lyari region, drawing from real-world geopolitical conflict, covert operations and gang wars. The film’s stakes go beyond its plot: after a series of underwhelming performances, this is widely seen as a make-or-break outing for Ranveer at the box office.

In the South, the loudest theatrical bet is Akhanda 2: Thaandavam, a Telugu-language mass entertainer starring Nandamuri Balakrishna in the lead, with Samyuktha Menon and Aadhi Pinisetty in key roles, set to release on December 5 across multiple languages including Tamil, Hindi, Malayalam, and Kannada. Meanwhile, the Malayalam industry pushes out a strong crime-thriller cluster with Kalamkaval, Dheeram, Khajuraho Dreams and Pongala, all releasing on December 5, while Rachel follows on December 6. Genre fans also get Five Nights at Freddy’s 2, releasing on December 2, and a rare big-screen anime event with Jujutsu Kaisen: Execution, also arriving on December 2.

What ties the week together is not a single tentpole but an ecosystem play. Streaming platforms are using December’s first week to ensure there is something new for every cohort — Hindi horror comedy, K-drama, Tamil thriller, Western, documentary, reality — while theatres are banking on one or two big titles in each language to keep footfalls flowing. For viewers, it translates into a simple proposition: if you want scale and spectacle, Dhurandhar and Akhanda 2: Thaandavam are the obvious big-screen choices; if you are staying home, Thamma, The Abandons, The Price of Confession, Jay Kelly, Stephen and Gharwali Pedwali together offer a snapshot of how crowded, competitive and diversified India’s December entertainment economy has become.