The Tamil Film Producers’ Council (TFPC) is seriously mulling forming a digital cinema distribution company to break monopolies in the market.
TFPC’s treasurer S.R. Prabhu said that the council hopes to renegotiate financial terms with digital cinema distribution companies, failing which they would seriously consider floating their own company.
“We are speaking to the companies to knock off the ‘Visual Projection Fee’ or ‘Virtual Print Fee’, which was charged by them because they had installed expensive equipment when digital cinema was embraced around the world. Since the investment has been recouped, we want the VPF to be rolled back,” said S.R. Prabhu.
While pointing out that VPF is being paid by distributors, Prabhu says that the money is indirectly paid by the producers. “The fee to screen the movie for one week in one screen is ₹10,000. The companies also take a share of the revenues they get from projecting advertisements in theatres. Combined, it will amount to ₹70-80 crore. Why must the producer give this up after investing so much money to produce the film?” he asked.
Responding to these charges, Senthil Kumar, co-founder, Real Image Media Technologies, said that the new team that has taken over at the producers’ council is misinformed about the numbers. “When producers were sending out film prints to theatres, they had to spend around ₹60,000-70,000. Today digital cinema has drastically reduced the costs. I would also like to point out that we have maintained the prices despite the rise in wages and the falling value of the rupee when compared to the dollar, which is significant since we import spares from abroad,” he said.
Asked why a print fee is being charged despite recovery of investment, he cited high cost of spare parts and rising maintenance costs. “We have the lowest tariffs when compared to those around the world. When the distributors screen movies in the U.S., they pay four times more VPF. It is not like we are sitting on millions. We are constantly reinvesting in the business to bring cutting edge technology,” he said.
The distributors, however, seem to be divided. “The problem is that they have become a monopoly. Smaller movies, some of which run for three to four days, are hugely affected. The tariff has to be definitely renegotiated,” said a distributor.
Well-known distributor Tiruppur Subramanian has a different view. “Digital cinema has brought costs down. We used to spend almost 8-10 times more when we had film rolls. The company that enables digital distribution also has to make money. They are not here for charity. So, the theatres will support them,” he said.
