Seven days to profit or bust

The life of a Tamil film has shrunk — a new release today has barely a week in which to make a profit for all its stakeholders

Back in the day, when the film business was ruled by single screens, a film, no matter how bad, would get at least one week of uninterrupted shows before getting bumped off for a new release. The film prints would then be transported to smaller screens, ensuring an extended life. A distributor would make new prints of a film only after seeing how well the film was doing. But now, with digital projection, and over 200 Tamil films releasing each year, right down to the smallest screens in the C-centres, the life of a film has shrunk to just a week or two. While a star’s film (for example Kabali ) gets a wide release, there are times even single screen cinemas tend to play multiple films at the same time. The fate of a film is sealed after the first show itself, and theatres no longer wait a week or more to either add or remove more shows for a particular film.

Battle of the screens

Multiplexes and single screens across Chennai city and the larger areas of Chengalpet area (comprising Chennai’s suburbs and the districts of Kanchipuram and Tiruvallur, Chengalpet is said to generate one-third of the total box-office gross of a Tamil film) had a tough time scheduling all the films that released during the Independence Day weekend. Two big Hindi releases — Mohenjo Daro and Rustom — were battling for screen space with the Tamil films, Wagah and Joker .

By Friday, word was out that Joker was the best among all the releases. Though the film was earlier allotted just a limited number of shows, by Tuesday, the film went on the replace the other releases in the bigger screens.

Stay flexi, stay profitable

Rakesh Gowthaman of Vettri Theatres in Chromepet (in southern Chennai) says, “How we schedule a film today has become one of the most important aspects of the theatre business. A theatre owner needs to take a call on which film deserves to be given priority; we do that based on the hype surrounding it. In the case of Joker , we had initially allotted just one show in our small[est] screen. But by Tuesday, we shifted it to the bigger screen with more shows. We need to keep our process of allotment flexible to stay profitable. Sometimes, we tell the distributors in advance that the number of shows would depend on the number of tickets we sell.”

According to trade sources, 95 per cent of the total lifetime of Kabali ’s theatrical collections from Tamil Nadu came in its first 17 days.

As of now, only select theatres are continuing to screen the film during weekends for family audiences. S Pictures’ Sreenivasan, who controls a large number of screens in Tamil Nadu’s North and South Arcot districts, says, “We screen multiple films in various languages. During weekends, our programming is targeted at the family audiences. During weekdays, the audience is limited to the youth.”

Ensuring an audience

Theatres are also experimenting with newer show timings to ensure all shows attract an audience. For instance, many theatres in the Chengalpet area have now started a 5 p.m. show that is sandwiched between the matinee and evening shows, which is allotted for films (mainly Hollywood) that are under two hours long. These shows are played without any advertisements and with just a five-minute interval.

Another innovation being tried out by SPI Cinemas is the pre-booking of tickets. Pre-booking has already commenced for Sivakarthikeyan’s Remo , even though the film is scheduled for release on October 7.

Gowthaman says, “Social media has changed the way movies are marketed today. Normally, the hype created through social media gives an indication about how big a film’s opening will likely be; you can feel the demand when advance booking starts.”

A veteran theatre owner from Tamil Nadu, who wishes to stay anonymous, however, doesn’t think pre-booking is a positive sign.

He says, “All this is just hype created to pander to the whims and fancies of our egotistical stars. Pre-booking needn’t work in Tamil cinema, as the producer himself does not know when his film will release. Our archaic censor board puts pressure on the producer and stops him from announcing a release date before a film gets censored.”

Meanwhile, producers like S. R. Prabhu are trying to push the envelope by backing films like Joker , and are trying to recover the production cost from Tamil Nadu theatricals alone. This comes at a time when Tamil channels prefer to buy only those films that are hits at the box office.

The safest in the film business then, are the theatre owners, especially those with the most screens. Remo ’s producer R. D. Raja is said to have sold his film only to distributors who control a large number of screens.

The logic is simple: a film should turn profitable within a week of its release.