ROW OF FLOPS SHOCKS
TAMIL INDUSTRY

CHENNAI: The poor box-office collections of all the Tamil films released during the festive Pongal season have created a panic situation in Tamil filmdom. Big starcast films like Vijaykanth’s Ullavuthurai, which opened to full houses, showed a sharp decline in collections after the first week. The fate of the other releases, which had shown great promise in the first three days, is no better. And most of them are likely to be yanked off the theatres. Mammootty’s Marumalarachi is the only film among the Pongal releases to do well. But even this film, despite steady improvement in collections, hasn’t been able to command full houses.

Generally, Pongal releases achieve bumper collections. But this year’s slump has thrown distributors and exhibitors in a spot. They are not making any commitments to films scheduled for an April release. Only Kamal Haasan’s film Kathala Kathala has got a good price from buyers.

Meanwhile, earlier releases like Kathiliku Mariyathai and Porkalam are doing steady business.

An immediate fallout of this poor box-office performance is the decision of several producers to ignore the diktat of the newly formed Tamil Nadu Film Federation (TFF) not to give film and song clips and interviews for telecast on Tamil satellite channels from January 1. Their reasoning is that they had signed agreements with the channels before the cut-off date.

Kayaar, vice president of SIFCC (South India Film Chamber of Commerce) said that never before in the history of Tamil cinema had so many films flopped simultaneously. He felt that the move to ban TV publicity had a negative impact because the trailers could have evoked people’s interest and drawn more people to the theatres. He regretted that “today 90 producers, who do not have any work, are deciding for ten producers who are actively making films when it should have been the other way around.”

Bharathiraja, president of Tamil Nadu Film Creators and Employees Federation who was a party to the TFF decision to ban publicity on TV channels, has now asked for a reconsideration of the move. The exhibitors, distributors and producers of films that flopped recently feel, on hindsight, that they were let down by a lack of TV publicity. Apart from this, CD of all latest films are freely available in shops and are being telecast freely by cable networks. The sudden drop in the collection of Vijaykanth’s Ullavuthurai, which had drawn full houses in the first week, has been attributed to video piracy. At the TN State awards function Vijaykanth appealed to the Chief Minister to tackle the menace of illegal showing of films on cable.

K Rajagopal, president of Tamil FIlm Producers Council said that they had decided to allow two-minute trailors on the lines of Hindi films on TV. Whether it should include songs has still to be finalised. The Chennai film distributors, who had opposed the ban, and TV channels are having the last laugh.