While coronavirus lockdowns have posed challenges for businesses across the creative industries, the production sector has been hit particularly hard. Film shoots have been called off or put on hold for the foreseeable future – leaving freelancers without work and companies without a current income.
Not just small to medium production houses, but also top production houses are also hardly hit. There are countable production houses in Tollywood which give salaries on time to their employees including writing and direction team. But, these production houses have also stopped paying salaries for last 2 to 3 months. Only one or two production companies are paying half the salaries to their employees.
It is predicted that, government will allow film shoots sometime this month. The Telangana and Andhra Pradesh Governments have asked producers guild to come up with an action plan for film shoots. Of course, observing social distancing, sanitizing the sets and other norms are mandatory for one to get permission.
Even if film shoots get started this month, employees may not get immediate relief, as producers will come out of cash crunch only if the film business is closed. There will be salary cuts for the employees for few more months until situations come to normalcy.