Will the Telugu Cinema survive?

All the Telugu Cinema exhibitors, who are entangled in the vicious circles of the problems have decided to close all the theaters down on 1st of April 2000. But when our dynamic CM earnestly requested the exhibitors to keep the status quo for a couple of days, the exhibitors postponed the D-day to 5th April 2000. As nothing turned out on 5th April, most of the theaters in AP went for a shutdown.

Before discussing anything on this front we must make ourselves clear of the the concept of slab system that is in existence now. In the earlier days there used be a tax system on the number of tickers sold. But when Late NT Rama Rao came to power, he introduced slab system, according which the exhibitor has to pay the entertainment tax for total number of seats we have in the theater, irrespective of the number of viewers that are coming to watch the film.

We used to have 122 films releasing in Telugu in 1986 when this decision was made. But in this present context we have 65 films released in 1999 (we are talking about the straight films .. not the dubbed ones ... for more information visit the movie list page). We have less number of films releasing in year and the success rate has come down to a pathetic state. Since exhibitor has to pay for the number of seats he has in theater than the number of people visited his theater, exhibitor is becoming the scapegoat by paying the same amount for a cinema that is running packed houses and the cinema that is seeing all red.

We are having 15-20 big films(we define big film as the ones which stars the top4 heroes and Pawan and Mahesh, the films directed by EVV & SV Krishna Reddy etc and the films produced by Editor Mohan, Sravanti Ravi Kishore etc) releasing an year that guarantee initials. But what about the rest of films that old films that are getting re-screened? All the old films are exhibited in the cable TV at a rate of 5 per day. On the top of it, we are not having enough releases to feed the theaters.

Exhibitors too are a part of cinema industry. They form the basic foundation of the whole system that is alive now. They cant be going away from the industry as the number films that are being produced have come down drastically. The cinema industry should work like a family and solve the issues rather then shutting the theaters down.

Each and every exhibitor has myriad problems to take care of. On the top of it, the municipalities are issuing new rules to irritate the agitated exhibitor. For example, recently the municipality of Kakinada has issued an order by fixing the ceiling of the price of 'Tea' and 'Cycle Stand'.

Each theater is supporting around 50 families directly or indirectly. One of the basic motivating factors for the exhibitors to run the theater on humanitarian grounds is to make sure that those 50 families will not become homeless. But the Government is least bothered about the whole affair and it's only aim is to grab the bounty of 70 crores of entertainment tax it accumulates per year from the theaters.

Producers do come and go. Same is the case with the distributors. But the the exhibitor is the one who is here to stay. A cinema hall is a fixed property which does not have instant liquidity and it has lot of pride attached to it. Most of the municipalities in AP run on the entertainment tax generated from Movie Exhibitors. If theaters are shut down, most of the municipalities have to seek for another revenue generating system. Why can't they charge the cable operators the viewers instead of the exhibitors.

The whole industry should go hand in hand. In the exhibitor is not prosperous enough, the luxury of watching the film in a cosy theater will no more a reality. As we had 'Nuvvu Vastavani' released and more big films like Yuvaraju and Badri lined up in queue, the Government should take the responsible steps to save the industry.

Cinema exhibition is no more a business. It has become a social service.

Jeevi
Editor
Idlebrain.com
7th April 2000