“If the president of Telugu Film Producers Council doesn’t sign the unanimous resolution, we will all sit for an indefinite hunger strike” reads an SMS sent in bulk to thousands of people in showbiz, media and anyone who is even remotely associated with Tollywood.
It is a sign of the struggle going on in the film producers’ council. The Telugu film industry is currently divided into two groups: one is the A-league film makers who own a huge number of theatres and have half-a-dozen actors in their family, and the other is small movie makers who make films on a budget of less than Rs 5 crore and struggle to get theatres to screen their films. The fight between these two groups in the Telugu Film Producers’ Council led to the resignation of Mr Shyam Prasad Reddy, the president of the Council on October 14.
Trouble had been brewing in the council for long but it broke into the open when the council unanimously passed a resolution a month ago, requesting the government to reduce ticket prices of theatres, cut shooting location charges by 75 per cent, make it mandatory for theatres to screen small budget movies for at least 16 weeks and restrict screening of dubbed movies to 50 theatres in the state.
However, the president of the council, Mr Reddy, did not sign the resolution giving rise to allegations that he was partial to big film makers who own theatres, and was ultimately forced to quit.
“All producers unanimously passed the resolution to restrict dubbing movie releases; English movies can’t be dubbed and entertainment tax should be increased on dubbed movies. Mr Reddy didn’t sign the resolution or send it to the government. He couldn’t walk the tight rope between the small movie makers and A-league film makers and so he resigned,” said a producer on condition of anonymity.
Allegations of acting like a ‘mafia’ by holding hundreds of theatres for themselves and charging exorbitant rents have been levied against Suresh Babu, Allu Aravind et al. The principal demand of small budget movie makers is that theatre rents are too high, amounting to roughly Rs 350 crore every year, which is 40 per cent of the box office collection, leaving very little for the producers themselves. Small movie makers allege that the resolution has not been sent to the government because most of the theatres are owned by a few big names in Tollywood who want things to continue as they are. To make matters worse, the president of the Film Producers’ Council ordered that members should not talk to the media on these issues, and if they do, they will be suspended from the council for six months.
Irked by the threat of suspension, the small budget movie makers started a ‘Save Telugu film industry’— campaign with a blog on the alleged atrocities of big film makers and the bulk sms campaign asking people to save the industry.
“It is shocking to ask small producers not to talk to the media. Power in the Telugu Film Producers’ Council, which has over 600 members, is vested in the hands of a few. Ever since the multiplexes raised ticket prices from Rs 100 to Rs 150, these big shots want to increase ticket prices in stand-alone theatres, too, from Rs 50 to Rs 75, which will kill small budget cinema. They suspended me because I spoke to the media about the ‘mafia’ in the film industry. A few families in the industry are destroying it and so we started the campaign against them,” Mr Nattikumar, joint secretary of the council, told the media.
“We want the theatres to follow a revenue-sharing percentage system on the tickets sold per show in the place of the rental system. We are also being blackmailed by a few big film producers to stop our demands. The council failed to protect the interests of small movie makers,” says Jaya, a director who is actively fighting to fulfil the demands of small movie makers.
It is also being held against the Producers’ Council that it did not intervene in the controversy over the title of the film Khaleja though small time producer Vijayabhaskar Reddy had registered the title much before Mahesh Babu poached it for his film. The top film makers rubbish all these allegations.
Daggubati Suresh Babu, who has taken hundreds of theatres on lease and is said to be charging high rents for the past several years, claims that it is not big versus small movie makers, but successful versus unsuccessful movie makers in Tollywood.
“The rents of theatres in the state are lower than in Tamil Nadu and Karnataka. If these film makers make unwatchable movies and accuse us of acting like a mafia and charging high rents, it is baseless. We are charging `10 per ticket in theatres for 20 per cent of the seats as per government norms. What is the harm in increasing the rates of tickets for other sections in the theatre? These are allegations being made by unsuccessful movie makers against successful ones. None of the producers alleging lack of theatres or losses due to high rents have ever made a sensible and watchable film,” declares Suresh Babu.
With actors confined to their work and a leadership crisis in the industry, Tollywood is out on the streets waging a war with itself in the name of ‘survival’.
No comments:
Post a Comment