Opinion: ‘Be open about cinema business’

Hollywood has BoxofficeMojo, which tracks the box office figures of every screen and reports day-wise collections across the globe. Hence, everyone in the industry there knows about the success or failure of a film. 

Corporatisation of Hindi cinema and box office revenues largely coming through multiplexes (almost 80%) has ensured even Hindi film industry reporting the box office figures every day openly. Box Office India team does this transparently there. Hence there is clear understanding on the outcome for a film by fourth day of a Hindi film’s release. Though there may be slight over-reporting by few producers, overall, there exists transparency in Hindi film industry. 

However, such a scenario does not exist in South especially in Tamil cinema of industry-wide reporting of collections. Hence, most trade analysts and social media writers are forced to report the collection figures given by the producers or distributors, which are usually exaggerated by a large margin to make the team involved in the film happy and create positive buzz around the film. The sad part is, these exaggerated figures are picked up by national media and reported as facts, which becomes a permanent record. This is the reason, we notice ridiculous collection figures often being written about for even not so successful films in various media. 

When a lie is repeatedly told, it is commonly believed to be true. The same happens here. Even the team associated with the film starts believing and demand higher remuneration for their next film, assuming the exaggerated figures as real collections. This in turn makes their peers also demand higher remuneration stating their market is equal or bigger. What Producers fail to understand is that their attempt to create positive buzz by reporting exaggerated collections actually damages the industry in the long run as the cost of films shoot up due to this trend. Not just box office collections. To show their film is bigger than the competing film, many report higher number of screens for release, while in reality Tamil Nadu does not have that many screens to show these films if you combine their numbers! Even the buying prices of territories are grossly over-reported to get better terms from the exhibitors, which leads to exhibitors over-charging the audience for tickets to cover the higher cost of acquisition.

Another major challenge faced is that most distributors and exhibitors trading in cash that too at the last minute to acquire the territory rights. Though the decision to release the film might have been taken a week or two earlier, most usually turn up only a day before the film’s release to sign the agreement with producers by paying largely in cash. This large amount of cash collected at the last minute from trade, mostly cannot be accounted in the bank and hence they are used to pay as black money to people associated with the film. 

With the Indian Government banning Rs.1,000 and Rs.500 notes, the time has come to bring in transparency in the Tamil film industry and stop cash transactions in all areas. Every exhibitor and distributor must move to transparent accounting and reporting of ticket sales (collections) , in addition to paying their amounts to the producers through bank documents. This will ensure only the ticketed price is collected from audience. When that happens, the accumulation of black money and over-reporting of collection figures will also stop. 

This will also in turn force the producers to pay artistes and technicians only through bank documents after paying proper taxes. There will be a cleanup in the industry if the above takes place. As demanded by popular distributor Tirupur Subramaniam, the real revenue and actual cost of a film must be known to everyone, to understand the outcome of each film. The government has already taken strong steps and now it’s time Tamil cinema industry took bold steps to move forward in that direction.