Tirupur Subramaniam
Distributor, Coimbatore, Erode, Tirupur, Nilgiris areas
Vijayashanti’s Vyjayanthi IPS (1990) was a superhit. Even now, I believe, a woman-oriented action film will work in the B and C centres. 36 Vayadhinile revolves around a woman, but is meant for a family audience. So it is an A-centre film. It doesn’t really work for the B and C centres where people primarily look for action and comedy. This is why the Anushka-starrer, Baahubali, which promises action, has been bought in Tamil Nadu at such a high price (Rs. 15 crore). With an interesting subject, even a woman-centric film could become a blockbuster.
Gautham Menon
Director
Content certainly is king and if you see Piku , you’d realise that offbeat films have an audience and a big market too. But in Tamil, we still work within a hero-oriented structure as only they ensure an opening. We depend on strong word-of-mouth to draw women to theatres. We filmmakers feel a film is good when we manage to achieve this. It’s also tough to find a producer for a woman-oriented script, but I’m dying to do something like that myself.
G. Dhananjayan
Producer
The success of 36 Vayadhinile is an exception as it marks the comeback of an actress who left the industry at the peak of her career. She is also the wife of a superstar with a strong fan base. But if a big actress were enough, then even Nayantara’s Nee Enge En Anbe should have worked. When it comes to collections, 65 to 75 per cent of a Hindi film’s collection comes from multiplexes. In contrast, only 20 per cent of a Tamil film’s collection is from multiplexes. Most women prefer to stay away from single screens and they would rather wait for the film’s DVD to watch it at home. Only with more multiplexes will we see a resurgence in women-oriented films and superhits.
Lakshmi
Actress
We have to understand that the majority of filmgoers are male. So when a good female-oriented film comes along, it works because of its rarity. My earlier films which were heroine-centric such as Ponni, Missi and Julie became popular also because they were backed by famous writers of the time such as Thoppil Bhasi and Jayakanthan. Most of my contemporaries stuck to working in hero-oriented films then and the trend continues even today. At the end of the day, even when a heroine-centric film becomes a superhit, she won’t get paid as much as a hero.
Kushboo
Actress
I feel Balachander sir too has made several women-oriented films that were superhits then. Instead of looking for numbers such as Rs. 50 crore and Rs. 60 crore, we should look at the return on investment for a female-oriented film. For instance, if 36 Vayadhinile has made three times its cost, it’s any day better than making a profit of Rs.10 crore after spending Rs. 50 crore on production. As far as collections from theatres are concerned, we don’t find a woman going to theatres alone, so films must cater to all, which includes her husband and kids. So these films must have a bit of everything to work big.
