More than 24 hours ago, the KFEF AKA Karnataka Film Exhibitors Federation dropped a 4-page press release, talking about their grievances and the lack of help and support from both the Karnataka State Government and the Kannada Film Industry. Due to the heavy advances asked by multiple film producers, all small screen theaters in Karnataka have closed down indefinitely.
Now obviously, this is for a just cause, in the eyes of the cinema hall owners but this stance will seriously inconvenience most small and medium budget films who rely on these small theaters to release their films. If this stance continues, there is a very good chance that either regional or international OTTs might come and sweep these films, even the big budget ones if they are lucky. And with the way Amazon Prime Video and Netflix are targeting big budget films, we wouldn’t be surprised if they end up taking multi starrer Kannada films straight to streaming.
With multiple Kannada cinema owners, especially the single screen theater hall owners nearing bankruptcy, due the coronavirus pandemic and film producers adding even more demands and asking for the aforementioned high advances, the KFEF has been made to take a drastic stance. Due to the rise in loan and its interest piling up, for these theater owners, all small screen theaters have decided to close down (as mentioned before) until the producers association will agree to their demands.
The KFEF has suggested a new percentage based revenue share model for these single theater exhibitors :- Exhibitors or theatres would get 35 per cent, while producers/distributors would get 65 per cent if the collection on houseful net of theatre is 75-100 percent. If the collection was 50-74 per cent, the exhibitors would get 45 per cent and producers would get 55 per cent. Similarly, the exhibitors’ share would be 70 percent and the distributors’ would be 30 percent if the theatre collection was 30-49 per cent. Finally, the exhibitors would get 80 per cent share and the producers would get 20 per cent if the collection was 1 to 29 percent. The producers/distributors will also be sharing 50 per cent of the revenue in first week’s collections, 40 per cent for the second week and 30 per cent for the third week regardless of the collections for their movies screened at multiplexes.
This deal sounds good on paper, but since it is an untested money distribution format, it is also understandable why the producers and distributors aren’t so keen on changing the revenue share format. This model will have to be implemented in a decently budgeted, preferably with at least one star actor film so as to check the model’s viability.
In the meantime, this hard stance will only help OTTs like Netflix and Amazon Prime Video to pursue regional films and it will most likely help them get quite a few movies to release directly in these OTTs.
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