I was planning to write the 3rd part of my traditional single screen theatre experience series ( check out the 2nd part- http://passionforcinema.com/the-traditional-single-screen-experience-series-%e2%80%93-apsara-theatrecoimbatore/)this morning when something took me by surprise. I was reading the Deccan Chronicle (Hyderabad edition) and saw that the major part of Page 2 was devoted to articles on cinema. This definitely looked unnatural to me & so I spent some time reading the articles. While the major space was devoted to how the bigger stars in A.P are of late doing fewer projects and so the effect of this on business in the industry, I was more intrigued by another article. This article was all about how single screen theatres mainly screening Bollywood movies in a lot of cities in A.P are now struggling for survival due to lack of content and playing old Hindi & English movies to keep the theatres occupied.
The article goes on to describe the plight of these theatres and said that if lack of content continues, then some of these theatres are likely to close down for survival. This article made me immediately think about the on going strike in Bollywood from a totally different angle. By now its common knowledge that there is an ongoing strike in Bollywood called by the Producers/Distributors combine against the Multiplexes in order to ensure 50: 50 ratio of revenue sharing (read this -http://passionforcinema.com/next-month-at-the-movies-money-saved-joy-lost/). What was initially expected to last for a month has now entered into its 2nd month and there still doesn’t seem to be any improvement in the anvil apart from a meeting held between the 2 sides earlier this week & another such meeting planned for the next week.
In fact more or less all the Bollywood releases that were scheduled for May have already been pushed to June or later. As of now the only movies likely to release in May are – Shivajee Chandrabhushan’s Frozen,99and Vashu Bhagnani’s Kal Kissne Dekha. All of us including myself have been wondering as to how the strike will benefit either side. We feel this very strongly as we know that the strike doesn’t help the producers/distributors since prolonged delay of projects can lead to a lot of problems like interest rates of money borrowed going up , promotion not possible, confusion regarding release dates etc. Also for the multiplexes lack of content is a sure thing to happen and so this has a direct impact on footfalls and hence the collection.
In the midst of all this is a totally different phenomenon that is being witnessed in a lot of places across the country – the traditional single screen theatres and cineplexes are now struggling for survival. It’s amazing that all the industry leaders or opinion makers have completely ignored this entity altogether in situation. How many of us have heard of anybody standing up for these temples of cinema which are already dying slowly? While I know the strike would make an impact on the 2 warring sections of Bollywood, I think we should be more concerned for the single screens and the cineplexes who have been caught in the middle of the strike for no fault of theirs.
Most of the multiplexes are chains and run in various locations across the country/in one or more states. And these chain multiplexes are usually run by fairly significant corporate houses for whom though there is a loss of revenue right now, they can make it up in due course of time because they have bigger pockets and in a lot of cases they enjoy tax benefit etc. This phenomenon does not hold true in case of the single screen theatres and multiplexes except in exceptional cases. What I mean is that except some theatres run by individuals/business houses for whom this is just another business venture, most of the other theatres are run by people who have been associated with the business for a long time and who have a deep dependence on it for revenue and other reasons.
It is these people who are getting affected and hit hard the most. Already across the country more and more of these traditional theatres are closing down for various reasons. And such a situation where lack of content to play in the theatres makes it even more difficult for them to survive. If there are quite a few Hindi release theatres in A.P & Karnataka which are affected by the strike, then the situation is even more serious when you look at theatres outside South India where the dependence on Hindi cinema is much much more. For those who would want to say why cannot these theatres look towards regional cinema in the interim period- I have a few things to say.
I am sure all of us would agree that in the typical Hindi belt it would be difficult to think of regional cinema of any kind substituting Hindi cinema. Also there have not been too many typical big Hollywood movies releasing recently to make up for some of the gap. Marathi cinema has a blockbuster now (Me Shivajiraje Bhosale Boltoy)which would help the theatres screening it, but do we have more such movies in the pipeline? It would be great if the answer is a resounding yes. Going down south the situation is not too impressive either except for Kerala. Kerala is yet to embrace the multiplex culture and this summer it has 2 movies which are doing well- To Harihar Nagar and Bhagyadevatha. Ayan is the only Tamil movie which has been doing well of late and lack of competition has ensured that the Telugu version of Billa do a reasonable business.
So again there are a lot of theatres screening regional movies but not all of them are doing too well. So it’s not just that the Bollywood strike which is impacting the survival of these traditional single screens but it’s a coincidence that while the strike is meant to be a face off between two warring sections of the sector, silently a 3rd section is getting affected. So for the survival of these temples of cinema I sincerely hope the strike is called off soon and we see the flow of releases happening shortly.
Note- In no way am I talking about the quality of movies here. I am trying to cover the vital issue of survival and viability of the traditional single screen theatres/cineplexes over here.
Originally published in PFC-check it out here-http://passionforcinema.com/producersdistributors-vs-multiplexes-standoff-the-3rd-dimension/
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