Movies incur losses in crores as theatre strike enters 4th day

CHENNAI: In the ten days leading up to the release of ‘Ivan Thanthiran’, producer and director R Kannan spent close to Rs 1.5 crore on its promotion and distribution. Hours after the film’s release, GST was rolled out on the midnight of June 30, and from July 3, movie theatres across Tamil Nadu shut down in protest of the 30% corporation tax introduced by the state government. The budget of

Ivan Thanthiran

is Rs 6 crore, and the loss it has incurred in one week is Rs 4 crore, says Kannan – “a collection it could have raked in had it had its weeklong run.”

“We will need to put in least Rs 75 lakh to market it again for a re-release, when the theatres open,” says Kannan. For small films at the receiving end of the strike, recovery is tougher because the stakes are high. A major grievance among directors whose films are closely slated for release around the GST, is that they didn’t see the strike coming. “Had we known about the shutdown, we wouldn’t have released the film. Unlike films that have been bought, what we collect from Ivan Thanthiran is what we get from the distributor,” says Kannan.

But for some directors, a release week – no matter how short-lived – is what matters most. Prashanth G Sekar, director of crime-thriller film Yaanum Theeyavan - also a June 30 release – says that having taken up close to Rs 50 lakh for promotions alone, there was no way the film release could be pushed. “Firstly, theatre owners skeptical about GST opened their advance bookings only on Thursday, as against on Tuesday or Wednesday, which is usually the norm for Friday releases. And even after this, they warned us that consecutive shows will be removed if a stipulated number of tickets were not sold. We personally went around spreading the word, asking our friends and family to come watch the film in large numbers. By the third day, we had 90% percent occupancy in close to 50 theatres,” says Sekar. “The hype is dead though. The film has had 25,000 downloads on TamilRockers already,” he says, visibly despirited.

Anticipating the instability that could arise with the GST, P Madan of Escape Artists Motion Pictures, which has produced the SJ Surya-starrer Nenjam Marappathillai, decided to roll back the film’s release, initially slated for June 30. “Under the current arrangement, the state government will get almost 14% of the net turnover of a film, which can be sizeable, in the case of big-star movies. In addition to this, they want 30%; this will only leave producers and theatre owners in loss,” he says.

Tamil Nadu Cinema Theatre Owners Federation’s president Abirami Ramanathan assures that all stranded movies will be given a well-deserved run, and new movie releases pushed by 15 days. But there will be no backing down until the corporation tax is completely removed, he says.

“This is not a professionally organised industry and everyone who has put in money in trouble now,” says producer G Dhananjayan, who is also the distributor for Ivan Thanthiran. “There are huge interest costs to be incurred, payments are stuck and when a bunch of films get delayed, they end up causing a backlog for the whole year.”