Mexican standoff at Tamil box office

With most big banners opting for festival openings, eating into each other’s revenue, it may be time for a relook at the release strategy, say industry insiders

December 28, 2014 12:55 am | Updated 08:21 am IST - CHENNAI:

The Tamil film industry may have released a record-breaking 200 films in 2014, but that doesn’t necessarily mean the industry is in the pink of health.

In fact, there has often been a clutter at the box office. Christmas weekend saw four Tamil movies — Arya’s Meagamann , S Pictures’ Kappal , Prabhu Solomon’s Kayal and Vikram Prabhu’s Vellaikara Durai — competing at the box office with Mysskin’s Pissasu , which opened to good reviews the previous weekend, and Rajinikanth’s Lingaa , which is now slowly being phased out to make way for new releases. 

Apart from Tamil films, new releases have to also compete with Aamir Khan’s PK , leaving fewer screens for each of the films.

Two main reasons have been offered to explain the crisis: one, there is enormous supply of films but the industry is witnessing a gradual decline in the number of screens in the interim period, when single-screen movie halls are making way for multiplexes, and two, star-driven, big-budget productions continue to opt for festival times such as Deepavali, Pongal and Tamil New Year to release their films, leaving smaller movies with no option to plan their release strategy.

“It’s going to be suicide at the box office,” says senior industry analyst Sreedhar Pillai, who has been tracking box-office trends in the Tamil industry for many years.

“The industry has to take a relook at its release strategy. The number of movies produced must come down. Also, the manner in which movies are financed — most, with sky-high interest rates — must change,” he says.

Planning needed

Many in the industry, including distributors, aver the problem can be partially solved by de-regulating ticket prices and planning the release much in advance. The latter is in the hands of the producers.

“In the Hindi film industry, all big movies are able to open solo because they plan the release much in advance. The reality is there are times when a film can’t be released — say, during March, when school exams are on, or during cricket season — because people don’t go to theatres,” says G. Dhananjayan, south head of Disney-UTV Motion Pictures.

Theatre owners have often complained that empty seats during the weekdays are driving up running costs.

Naturally, they don’t seem to mind the box-office clash even though some of them say that two big movies that release at the same time end up eating into each other’s revenues.

“As far as theatres are concerned, it is a good thing. We can have different movies playing on our screens. But, only the producers can come up with a solution to prevent clutter at the box office. This is Christmas, a holiday weekend, and I hope all movies do well,” says Abirami Ramanathan, managing director of Abirami Mega Mall and a well-known distributor in Tamil Nadu. 

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