HYDERABAD: The Telangana Theatres Association (TTA) announced on Wednesday that single-screen halls across the state will be shut for the next 10 days.
Starting May 17, the 450-odd single-screen theatres in the state will remain closed till May 26. Rapidly diminishing footfall has been cited as the key reason behind this move.
Vijayender Reddy, the president of the State Film Exhibitors Association, was quoted by PTI as saying that the daily expense incurred by an average single screen ranges from Rs 10,000 to Rs 12,000 in small towns and between Rs 15,000 to Rs 18,000 in Hyderabad. However, the theatres are not even able to earn even Rs 4,000 per day. This number drops further for smaller films.
In such a situation, added with the lack of notable releases in the recent past or the foreseeable future, the association has decided to take the drastic step of shutting theatres for some time. However, theatre owners would be willing to screen films provided any producer comes forward and pays the theatre management directly to screen their films.
At the time of filing this report, Krishnamma, Prathinidhi 2, Aa Okkati Adakku, Prasanna Vadanam and Aarambham were the Telugu films currently running in theatres in Hyderabad, mostly multiplexes.
Raju Yadav, a film starring Jabardasth-fame actor Getup Srinu, is scheduled to release on May 17. Sources informed TNIE that the film will be ‘mostly postponing their release’, in light of the statewide theatre shutdown. It may be noted that the two other noteworthy releases on May 17, namely Baahubali: Crown of Blood, a Disney + Hotstar original animated series based on Rajamouli’s epic Baahubali duology and Vidya Vasula Aham, an AHA original romantic drama starring Shivani Rajashekar and Rahul Vijay, are OTT releases. A vacuum in theatrical releases is expected to persist till May 31, which is when four films, including the Vishwak Sen-starrer Gangs of Godavari and Satyabhama, a police drama headlined by Kajal Aggarwal, are scheduled to hit the screens.
The plight of the single screens has been worsened by shorter theatrical windows, where films are streaming on OTT platforms in less than a month of its digital release, irrespective of the film’s scale or success at the box office. This issue has been disincentivising theatre owners and the entire theatrical ecosystem for a while now, which includes distributors and exhibitors.