KOCHI: With the demand for Malayalam cinema showing an upward trend globally, filmmakers and producers here are feeling hampered by pricey multiplexes and lack of access to professional distribution channels overseas.
A section of the industry now believes that legal releasing of movies through the Internet would be an option to tackle this. While, the overseas collection figures of many Malyalam movies are often considered over-rated and speculative, it is the good performance of the last three big hits— Drishyam, Bangalore Days and Premam — in the international market that is giving hope to producers.
“Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC)continues to be the major overseas releasing centre for Malayalam films. New territories that we have explored are the US and UK. Movies with hype and star value have takers in countries like Australia, New Zealand, Singapore and Malaysia,” said Lal Jose, film director and partner of LJ Films.
But the increase in demand for the movies is not reflecting in the revenue earned by the producer.
“The presence of a star is necessary to get distributors for Malayalam movies in other countries. Even if we get a distributor, we would have to agree with the terms and conditions put forth by them. Normally, the overseas rights of the films will be sold to the distributor for a meager amount. But for a super hit movie, a share to the tune of Rs 1 crore is possible from the GCC alone,” said Ziyad Koker, producer.
The best way for producers to tap the overseas market is to have overseas distribution channels on their own.
“A big player, who has own distribution channel in GCC and other parts of the world can bring the much needed change. Some big players including Eros International, which has production networks all over the globe, are now making films in Malayalam. This will help in assessing the volume of business that the Malayalam films can explore globally,” said director Ranjith Sankar, who also owns the production house Dreams ‘n’ Beyond.
When the distributors started to release films directly in Rest of India (RoI), the revenue started to increase considerably. “At the time of my first movie Passenger (2009), the revenues from Bangalore and Chennai, two other major State markets, were only `5 to `10 lakh. But now we are releasing movies in other regions including Mumbai, Ahmedabad and Nagpur. For a super-hit movie, the producer will get nearly `1 crore as share from RoI market,” he added. However, the exorbitant rates of multiplexes in other countries is a hindrance and affects the viewership, said Lal Jose. “The way to tackle this situation is to go for a legal Internet release, ” Jose said.