Lessons to be learnt from ‘Vishwaroopam’ (Tamil)

The pre-release poster of 'Vishwaroopam'.

Following are the lessons that filmmakers and students of life in general could learn from all the troubles that ‘Vishwaroopam’ had run into:

·         It is smart to sell your film to distributors if you have a steady performance record with the audience and if your film didn’t overshoot the budget by crores and crores of Rupees.

·         It is brilliant strategy to sell your film to DTH operators if you don’t have any control over your film’s budget and are never quite sure about how it is going to score at the box office. Pirated copies of films is a taken-for-granted outcome. DTH will, to a great extent immunize you from the effects of piracy.

·         It is ROTFL oversmartness to sell your film to both and then crib if the theatre owners and distributors are not amused by your business strategy.

In a very recent interview to a Tamil magazine regarding this issue, a very valid point was raised – about the pathetic infrastructure in movie halls – bad toilets, bad sound systems and air conditioning. These had always been the case. It wasn’t as if toilets were as clean as operation theatres during the release of ‘Manmadhan Ambu’ and things got worse only after that. Agreed film distributors and theatre owners made huge profits, but why the sudden awakening about bad toilets now?

Legally speaking, if I’m the distributor, then I have all the rights to demand that the producer doesn’t sell the film to either TV or release the DVD versions of it for a stipulated period of time after the film hits the theatres. Competition and monopoly take a different form here. I cannot stop other distributors from buying other films and release them in my area, but I can stop them from releasing the same film in my territory.

Now, all this depends on whether at the time of agreeing to release ‘Vishwaroopam’, the distributors and theatre owners were aware of the fact that Rajkamal was also going to sell the DTH rights and that the release dates were going to be this close.

And, the four-day breathing space to theatre owners is baffling.

If I know that the film is going to be released on TV within four days, why would I bother going to the theatre and watching it? If the film is shown once on TV, why would I go to the theatres and watch it?

The problem is – due to the impending release of ‘Vishwaroopam’, the arrival of a number of other films were postponed. I feel sorry for the makers of those films.