As many of you might know, there is an ongoing dispute amongst film makers and the multiplex owners regarding the share of revenue amongst them. Currently it is divided up as 50-50, 40-60, 30-70 for the 1st, 2nd and 3rd weeks with the higher share in favor of the multiplexes.
While the film fraternity did not mind this for the first few years, it has now suddenly woken up and has stood united against this so called exploitation. According to me, the reason that the film fraternity ignored this in the previous years was either because they are making more money now, out of shows running in multiplexes, than they used to for single screens and have only gotten greedier with time, or they were just dumb enough not to do the math earlier. It might even have been the recession, inflation or the string of flops for biggies, that we have seen in the last 4-5 months, that has led them to take this step.
With the revenue that can be achieved from multiplexes in mind, the producers started to increase the budget of their movies. Hence single screens merely became an add-on for big releases. The main moolah came from multiplexes. I remember, back in the day when the multiplex era had just begun, Mangal Pandey was released on a huge scale with as many as 33 shows running on a single day of the 1st week in a single multiplex in Pune. Even though it was a mediocre movie, it ran to packed houses for the 1st week and finished at par on the cost front. To take a perspective 33 shows x 7 days = 221 shows for a single multiplex in a week which is as good as 11 single screens playing 4 x 7 shows a week. No wonder that producers found this new methodology of movie distribution very enticing. Generally in one city 1-2 single screens get to distribute a movie. So that's almost 1/10Th of the number of shows we have these days. Hence the big budget movies cannot afford a small scale release.
On the other hand, multiplexes have their own canteens, other entertainment facilities like pool tables, McDonald's, CCD's which earns them an extra revenue. If a movie does well, it wipes out their expenses easily. Some or the other movie generally works. Very rarely is the case that we have seen movies failing for over 6 months. Keeping their expenses and the growing inflation in mind, the multiplex owners are adamant to stick to their current revenue sharing plan.
In this wrestling match between the filmmakers and the multiplex owners, the biggest loser is the avid movie-goer. In this time of strike, its bollywood buffs like me who have been deprived of their staple diet of movies. I think this is a contest where the biggest bully will win. Both sides feel that the other party should give in first, giving rise to a stalemate. Both sides are at a win win situation. Filmmakers don't mind stalling their movies by a month or two and go back to the drawing board to touch up on their movies. Multiplexes on the other hand, can keep showing re-runs of old Hindi hits like Ghajini, along with the new Hollywood movies and new regional movies that are being released which is a good enough scheme for the time being, without having to lose much of their business.
Now there are talks of releasing movies to single screens but again the big banners won't do that because it would virtually need a DDLJ like run to make their movies work which is more than ambitious in today's date considering the video piracy issue. Hopefully, I guess with the summer holidays arriving, both these fraternities are going to come to a consensus and we will see some movies releasing soon.
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