In an unprecedented move for the Tamil film industry, the Tamil Nadu Theatre and Multiplex Owners’ Association has released a set of guidelines, outlining a revenue-sharing model with producers, seemingly based on the market value of male stars in the industry.
According to a statement released by the Association, the discussion regarding this decision took place at a meeting on Friday.
“At a time when we are growing joyously, things like taxation regulations, increase in maintenance costs, increase in personal tax, increase in employee salaries, are a big burden to the management and operation of theatres,” it states.
As a result, in order to ‘combat’ these factors, the Association has said that it would like to ‘streamline’ its regulations. According to this new model, theatre owners and producers would divide revenues based on the collections of a film across various audience centres, week by week.
The basis of the model seems to be the ‘bankability’ of the male lead in a film with ‘top-ranking’ actors being given a higher percentage of the revenue of their films. For example, the new model proposes that producers and theatre owners share profits on a 60: 40 ratio for the first week collections in ‘A’ centres for Rajinikanth, Ajith and Vijay films— the most bankable stars according to the Association. In other centres like B, C and D— traditionally the semi urban and rural areas where their film releases— the margin would be 65: 35.
“This is the theatre owners saying that they will give producers 60 percent of the revenue for the Tier 1 stars. I don’t think it will be followed strictly. Earlier, there were cases where they’d give a higher ratio depending on the movie, the hero, the craze for the movie, etc. The categorisation is just to put them into three tiers based on the commercial saleability of the actors,” he says. Explaining the context of this new decision, industry tracker and analyst Sreedhar Pillai explains that the effort to streamline by theatre owners is a commercial decision given the dwindling revenues.
However, he admits that with the lesser number of audiences coming to the theatres, the decision, taken with a business mindset, will invariably have an adverse effect on small films.
“Other than the stars mentioned (in the letter), others will find it difficult to release their films,” he says.
He adds, “Commercially it makes sense, don’t know if it will be implemented but this will be the future. Sooner or later they have to adopt this because even the big stars are not collecting as much as they used to. Charges of making a film have increased with the high salaries being commanded by the actors.”
Producer Dhananjayan says that we need to wait and watch if the industry will accept the move by theatre owners.
“Multiplexes in Mumbai have done this in an effort to streamline collections. They (the theatre owners) want to bring the same understanding here with producers; they are saying that they don’t want to demand film-wise for each film that is releasing, but based on the artiste. So they have classified the stars into Tier 1 top stars, medium stars and all other stars,” he says.
The classification has led to quite a lot of discussion on social media and film circles. Conspicuously absent in the list is National Award winning actor Kamal Haasan, Rajinikanth’s contemporary, who is also a big star in Tamil Nadu. That he and Vikram, who is considered to have followed his footsteps when it comes to experimenting in cinema, are in the ‘Other actors’ category has been perceived as an ignominy.
Other big names which have been clubbed under ‘Other actors’ include Karthi and Vishal. And of course, there is no mention of any woman actor in the list. Despite the fact that Nayanthara is hailed as a bankable star who brings in audiences, she still isn't considered to be on par with the male stars.