Tollywood moving towards shutdown?

The recent developments in Telugu Film Producers Council is indicating towards a shutdown of film production for atleast few months until the digital video and marketing giants come to a quick understanding with the producers to renew their service charges. UFO and Qube, are the digital content uploaders who have set up their services in various theatres across India and Telugu states. The producers will have to pay service charges for loading their film into their equipment, so that the film is projected in theatres across the Telugu states.

As the service providers are collecting double triple charges from Telugu producers than they are from other states, Telugu Producers have decided to shut down the film production after 1st March until they can arrive at a proper solution to the issue. Suresh Babu explained about the situation with Mental Madilo as an example and with it, many others have also come out in support of this movement proposed by the Council.

One of the famous producers said, “This is a really good move from Council and we hope the betterment of producers is taken into consideration as a keen interest with this movement going forward.” Another producer, Tummalapalli RamaSatyanarayana said, “We are paying Rs. 6500/- even to load film at ‘C’ centres and you can imagine the cost in Cities and towns. In other states, the cost is as less as Rs. 2500/- and this is unfair by the digital content uploaders like Qube. Producers should come together on this issue and look to solve it as amicably and as quickly as we can. For a producer, the avenues for revenue are diminishing and it is becoming a burden to release a movie. We are thinking about paying Rs. 500/- minimum service charge and ask exhibitors to pay the rents. Also, I personally think producers should get royalties for music and other content related to their films whenever it is used by third parties just like musicians and singers and actors.”

Well, this seems to be a major issue that needs immediate attention from each and everyone. Even though it is a private issue some regulations should be imposed by Government too, in favour of the content creators as producers are increasingly finding it difficult to release their films and even big films are unable to make necessary profits as the costs are constantly increasing.