In a bold move to boost viewer engagement and expand its user base, ZEE5 has launched a new initiative offering free access to a selection of blockbuster films from its premium movie catalogue. Beginning June 20, the platform is releasing one top-performing film every Friday in seven Indian languages — Hindi, Marathi, Bengali, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, and Kannada — aiming to make high-quality cinema more accessible to audiences across the country.

This initiative, titled Friday Box Office, is designed to give all users, including those without a subscription, a taste of the platform’s most celebrated titles. Each film will be available for free streaming for a few weeks, giving users ample time to explore and enjoy the content.

“At ZEE5, we believe great stories should be within everyone’s reach,” said Kartik Mahadev, Chief Marketing Officer, Zee Entertainment Enterprises Ltd. “Friday Box Office is our way of democratising access to high-quality entertainment by bringing some of our most loved premium titles to a larger audience.

“This initiative not only strengthens our multilingual storytelling proposition but also invites new users to experience the richness of the ZEE5 content universe. It’s a consumer-centric move designed to build habit, increase reach, and reaffirm our role as India’s destination for diverse and inclusive entertainment.”

The curated film lineup includes a compelling mix of critically acclaimed and commercially successful titles such as ‘Tarla’, ‘Pad Man’, ‘Lost’, ‘Projapoti,’ ‘Aparajito’, ‘Vikram Vedha’, ‘Valimai’, ‘Bangarraju’, ‘Geetha Govindam’, ‘Drishya 2’, and ‘Tonic’, among others. The selections aim to reflect ZEE5’s broad content library and its stronghold in both Hindi and regional language storytelling.

With India’s OTT landscape becoming increasingly competitive, ZEE5’s move to offer premium content for free signals a strategic shift toward user acquisition through content sampling. By reducing the paywall barrier and reaching out to a language-diverse digital audience, ZEE5 is hoping to create stickiness and habit among casual viewers, eventually converting them into long-term subscribers.