CHENNAI: Tamil Nadu's theatre owners are a worried lot.
Despite 48 films being released this year, there has been no superhit so far. In fact, only three films in the five-month period have managed to be profitable for theatre owners:‘Angadi Theru’, ‘Tamil Padam’ and ‘Paiyaa’.
And to top it all to their misery, one of the most-anticipated films of the year, Vijay's 50th movie ‘Suraa’, has turned out to be a damp squib, forcing theatre owners to rethink their mode of acquiring screening rights, and the price they pay for it.
In Chennai, a system is followed by which both theatre owners and distributors share the profits or loss that a film makes. The rest of the State, however, follows a Minimum Guarantee (MG) system. By this method, theatre owners pay up a specific amount upfront to the distributor, and if the film makes more than the MG amount, the distributors and theatre owners share profits at an already-specified percentage, usually 50-50. This partnership system is followed usually for upcoming actors, while the MG method prevails for films of big actors.
"By the MG system, when a film flops, the losses are borne by the theatre owners solely. And the practice of screening preview shows for us before the movies are sold, was stopped more than 10 years ago. So we do not know how good a film is, until we actually buy it. We want to stop acquiring films by this method, or seek at least a reduction in the rates at which movies are sold to us," said Rohini Paneerselvam, president, Tamil Nadu Theatre Owners Association.
Such continuous losses have forced many theatres to shut down.
From over 2,500 in 2000, today, the State has only about 1360 theatres. When Rajinikanth-starrer ‘Kuselan’ had flopped in 2007, the theatre owners had similarly sought a refund, and the actor had done it to the tune of 35 % of the MG amount paid. The association had vowed then to not release films on MG method.
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