SALEM: The screening of eight new Tamil films have been suspended due to soured business relations between theatre owners and film distributors in Dharmapuri and Attur. The distributors allege that the theatre owners are defiant and are preventing the release of films - 'Brahmadeva', 'Kunguma Poove Konjum Purave', 'Rajathi Raja', 'Pasanga', 'Guru Ennallu', 'Mariyadhai', 'Ivandhanda Police' and 'Saravanan'.
According to Theatre Owners’ Association (in Salem, Namakkal, Dharmapuri and Krishnagiri) president K T Govindan, cinema halls in the State are facing the worst business crisis. Theatre owners rent films from distributors on the basis of “minimum guarantee” (MG) or “percentage basis”. As renting films on MG basis resulted in huge losses, all the films were brought under the percentage basis after government intervention.
Contravening the agreement, film distributors formed the Salem Thiraipada Viniyogasthargal Council and imposed a condition that all films should be rented through the council only. They also specified the theatre in which a particular film must be screened, Govindan said. This caused huge losses to theatre owners.
The distributors had ignored an agreement reached at a recent mediation meeting at the Dharmapuri Collectorate, Govindan said and added that they had also stopped supply of new films.
However, in Salem and Namakkal most of the theatres were functioning, as the distributors themselves owned the cinema halls. But in Attur and Dharmapuri film screening had been by and large affected, as new films had not been released in the two towns.
Distributors council president R Murugan said the theatre owners had covertly formed cartels in all important towns and had resorted to arm-twisting the distributors.
“They want to decide which theatres the films should be screened while we maintain that since distributors buy films at a huge cost these days they should have a say in deciding or at least suggesting that new films must be screened where the daily theatre collections are high,” Murugan said.
