In a never seen before manner, Tollywood stood solidly behind South Indian film producers decision to close the theatres against Digital service Providers against their exorbitant prices and high handed behavior.
However noted producer, director Thammareddy Bharadwaja found fault with the decision. He said, "I welcome the move of the industry to fight against the decision of the Digital Service Providers. However there are many more problems which the film industry is facing. Had the industry biggies taken a collective decision to fight for the solving of all the problems and then got the theatres closed, it would have made an ever bigger impact. If they close the theatres for one problem, who will solve the remaining problems."
It is known that Telugu, Tamil, Kannada and Malayalam industries formed a JAC and decided to close the theatres demanding the Virtual Print Fees (VPF) by the DSPs. Thammareddy raised issues like VPF, Online Booking, GST and LLP.
Thammareddy demanded abolition of VPF rather than partial reduction saying US has no VPF. He said theatres are screening ads for 20 minutes and DSPs are taking the amount gained by them. He suggested reduction of the ads to 8 minutes and sharing of the revenue tby the producers, theatres and the DSPs.
Thammareddy questioned the service charge through online booking of tickets. He said while producers are paying the rent to theatres and Government paying the maintenance charges, there is no point in theatres getting 50% of that service charge. He opined it should go to the producer. He suggested opening of an online booking portal on behalf of the chamber and producers council.
Thammareddy questioned why no one is talking about the GST as ticket rates are set to increase. In cities GST will be 28% which will increase the Rs150 ticket to 200. This may make movie lovers avoid small films.
Thammareddy said reports came in channels that some producers established LLP company and siphoned 28crs in the name of publicity. He questioned what is Producers Council doing when they bypassed the Producers Council.